


Souls on the Banks of the Jungnangcheon

by Zetared



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Animal Death, Bisexual Hawkeye Pierce, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical Drunkenness, Child Death, Gen, Graphic Injury, Homophobic Language, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Minor Character Death, Multi, X-treme Angst, canon infanticide, hawkeye whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 13:56:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 58,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18121865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zetared/pseuds/Zetared
Summary: "You see this? ...There's supposed to be a medical insignia there--caduceus. I probably dropped it in a patient." - Hawkeye, General’s Practitioner





	Souls on the Banks of the Jungnangcheon

**Author's Note:**

> Hermes’s caduceus is actually misattributed to the medical field. However, in the US, the caduceus’s use as medical symbol is prevalent, especially in military circles. And where symbols go, gods follow. 
> 
> This fic is not remotely canon compliant, except for when it is.
> 
> Fic title is a play on the title of artwork of Hermes acting as a psychopomp called Souls on the Banks of the Acheron by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl; the Jungnangcheon is a stream that passes through Uijeongbu. 
> 
> The “Hawkeye whump” tag is NO joke; please take care of yourselves. I’d apologize for Hawkeye’s sake, but I’m not actually sorry. The other tags are also important, please tread carefully.

It amuses him, when he thinks on it, how easily humanity is deceived. He slips up frequently in those first few months, and nobody's the wiser. He forgets his own backstory, speaks blatant misinformation for the sake of a joke. He says he’s been to war before, for one. (And he has--time is full of wars, to miss them all would be some kind of miracle. _Hawkeye Pierce_ , however, has never seen a war zone; he’s never even been abroad, before now). He repeatedly says he’s from Vermont. (Maine, it turns out, is very far from the state of Vermont on the U.S. map. He doesn’t know why he says it wrong so many times, but he’s also never been to either place, so perhaps his confusion is understandable). He mentions his dead mother in the present tense a few times. Talks about a sister that does not, on paper, exist. (Hawkeye Pierce’s mother is long gone. He is an only child. He forgets, he forgets). Somehow, these mistakes get lost in the shuffle of their day-to-day lives. No one ever questions it. Humans will forgive these inconsistencies. They neglect to see so much. All it takes is a bit of sparkle, a bit of gloss to distract them. 

Razzle-dazzle obfuscation is second nature to him. He adapts. As the days advance, he gets better at committing to the deception, and his stories line up well. He’s just gotten the hang of it, in fact, when Henry Blake and Trapper...leave (with no warning for the first departure, with no goodbye for the second; the universe can be so cruel). Two familiar faces disappear from his landscape. Hawkeye clings to the details he has finally mastered as a source of comfort in this strange, unbalanced time. Name: Benjamin Franklin Hawkeye Pierce. Home: Crabapple Cove, Maine. Family: Doctor father, widowed. Important, tedious things--the hallmarks of his alleged humanity. It grounds him as he reels from the loss of his friends and its unexpected impact on his ancient heart.

Then, like magic, new faces appear and replace the old.

BJ Hunnicutt is one of _his_. It’s hard to tell at first glance, perhaps, but that’s only because the man has mastered the art of trickery so utterly. BJ _looks_ to be a gentle, unassuming kind of man, the sort who is corruptible but could never himself be branded a ‘bad influence’. The first time Hawkeye catches BJ in the midst of pulling a prank, Hawkeye nearly gives himself away for laughing with delight. Instead, he clamps his hands over his mouth and pulls back around the corner of the nearby tent, warm from head to toe. He even allows himself to fall for a few of the man’s well-placed tricks just to encourage a job well done. Hawkeye misses Trapper more than he could ever expect, more than he’ll probably ever admit, but BJ stands solidly on his own merits. Hawkeye is glad to claim him.

Colonel Potter is different than Henry Blake. He’s different than just about anyone. Potter is decidedly _not_ one of his. He’s a no-nonsense sort of man, though his sense of humor is certainly promising. Hawkeye figures that the logical, hard-nosed part of the Colonel is mostly military. The soul of the man himself is amiable and warm. If nothing else, the Colonel is competent, and he is kind. Hawkeye misses Henry Blake with the kind of terrible intensity that only an immortal can feel in the face of human death--but if they had to replace Blake, the American military could have done much worse than Sherman Potter.

Frank Burns is a blight on creation. There were times, in those first days in Korea, when Hawkeye had been suspicious of him, thinking him some sort of Changeling or other fae creature trying to pass himself off. No human being, he thought, could fail at _being human_ so spectacularly. He was wrong. (Sometimes he’s wrong. He can admit it.) Hawkeye marvels that the ferret-y man remains when so many other, better souls have gone away, never to return.

Hawkeye crows in pure joy to see Frank Burns leave Margaret’s tent in the middle of the night, both of the lovebirds smothering shouts of discomfort, scratching wildly at their skin. Frank’s ferret face twists into an expression of horror, and Hawkeye allows himself to revel in it, just a bit. (The itching powder won’t cause any lasting damage, he’s sure. BJ is devious, but he’s not cruel--at least, not with intent.)

After a time, despite the fun of making trickery a spectator sport, Hawkeye feels...left out. He should be ashamed of himself, sulking over such a mundane, mortal affair. In truth, however, he has been prone to these deep, nonsensical feelings for a long time. He feels the same sort of visceral, uncontrolled reaction in the operating room, watching a man’s life slip through his fingers despite his every effort. Jealous, regret, anger, confusion, fear. Human feeling, he has decided, is not entirely without merit, but it does cause significant complications. It’s a wonder mortal beings manage accomplish anything when they’re busy _feeling_ so much.

“Is it just me or is it colder in here than it was a minute ago?” BJ asks. He doesn’t mean it literally. He’s making a joke, trying to address the distance that has crept between him and his new bunkie over the past few days. “Hawk, come on. Talk to me. What’s got you in a snit?”

Hawkeye looks over at him, affronted. “A _snit_? Me? A snit? I have never, ever, in my life, been in a snit.”

“Well, that settles it, doesn’t snit?” BJ says, eyebrows raised at the minor ramble. Hawkeye throws his stale bread roll at the man--it wasn’t like he was going to try eating the damn thing. He’s immortal, sure, but he’s not going to take any chances. He glances around the mess, making sure they won’t be overheard. He doesn’t want to ruin BJ’s good fun or get his bunkmate in trouble.

“You could have asked me to help,” he hisses.

“Help?” BJ asks. He’s genuine in his confusion. That’s what makes BJ such a good trickster. He is, at his core, an honest man.

“If you want to blow off some steam around here, I get it. Believe me, I do. But I don’t know why you’re doing it alone. I want in.”

BJ’s eyes go comically round. “I didn’t know you knew. Have I been that obvious?”

“No, Beej. That’s the point. Half the camp already thinks it’s me, anyway. They’ll never expect this kind of behavior from _you_ of all people, not in a thousand years, not even with me to blame for leading you down the path of corruption. You know, Colonel Potter called me to his office last week. Told me--in a roundabout way--to quit with the japes. I think Margaret took her complaints right to the top after the incident with the nurses and the laundry soap.”

BJ frowns thoughtfully. “Won’t it get you in _more_ trouble when it turns out you _are_ the one doing these things?”

“Trouble? _Trouble_? BJ, are you kidding me? I know you’re still wet around the ears, here, but getting in trouble is the least of our worries. There’s a war on, if you haven’t noticed. Besides, neither of us _can_ get reprimanded if we never get caught.”

BJ grins. “Well, I could use an extra pair of hands for a few things….”

Hawkeye sticks out his hand obligingly. “My hands are yours. Partners?” he asks.

“Partners,” BJ agrees, and they shake on it. Such a gesture is more binding than BJ knows, but Hawkeye won’t use that against him. Not without good reason, anyway.

\--

Hawkeye opens bleary eyes and blinks a few times until things come into focus. As it turns out, there is nothing at all wrong with his vision. Klinger’s floral cotton tunic really is that obscenely garish. Hawkeye smiles reflexively at the sight of the man. Corporal Maxwell Klinger is not quite the same source of gleeful trickery that BJ is, but Hawkeye claims the odd, desperate man as his own, as well. Dressing in drag in rebellion against forces outside of one’s control--and sticking with the scheme so long, even after its obvious failure? Certainly those are behaviors that Hawkeye can appreciate. Also, from time to time in his life, Klinger has been a hell of a con man. Hawkeye hasn’t had much cause to watch over cutpurses and confidence men in this stage of his godly career. Klinger makes him feel...nostalgic. 

“Klinger,” Hawkeye slurs, tiredly. “What’re you doing in my tent?”

Klinger straightens up, tugging the large Easter bonnet on his head to rights. “Sorry to disturb your communal napping, Captain. I’ve been sent to fetch you, sir. The Colonel is in a tizzy over what happened with those stink bombs yesterday. You’re at the top of his list of suspects, and I think he’s going to actually kill you this time.”

Hawkeye sits up. “Oh, well, how can I possibly resist that kind of invitation?” He groans softly, stretching a kink out of his back and slowly pulling on his pants and a shirt. Klinger watches unabashedly, interest obvious to anyone who’s looking for it. Yes, Hawkeye approves of the man very much.

“Sorry again, sir. I really hate to be the bearer of bad news.”

“It’s all right, Klinger. I’m not too worried. After all, I’m innocent.”

“ _Innocent_?” Klinger asks, voice rising high in incredulity. “Really? You mean it’s not you that’s been pulling all those pranks around camp the last few weeks?”

Hawkeye considers the question as he buckles his belt. He’s in no hurry to face this particular music. “I guess it’d be more accurate to say that I didn’t act alone.”

Klinger nods. “Now, see, that makes sense. You gonna snitch, sir? Take your accomplice down with you?” Sometimes Klinger’s Toledo roots are very noticeable, even under all the layers of chiffon and lace.

Hawkeye’s eyes flicker over to BJ’s cot, where the man lies face down in his pillow, drooling and dead to the world. “And share the glory of my success? Never. Lead on, soldier. Tell me, will I be blindfolded before the execution?”

“Yessir, and given a final cigar.”

“I don’t smoke,” Hawkeye points out.

“Huh,” Klinger replies, thoughtfully. “I wonder what they’d give you instead?”

“A ticket home would suffice,” Hawkeye says, because it’s the kind of thing Hawkeye Pierce would say.

Klinger grins. “Gee, sir, if you think that’s a possibility, you can name _me_ as your accomplice any time you want.”

Hawkeye stops walking. Klinger turns to him in confusion. Hawkeye takes the shorter man’s shoulders and looks him eye-to-eye. He wants Klinger to know he’s serious. “You know, if you ever get tired of playing these games, if you _really_ find yourself at the end of your rope--like you just can’t handle another single solitary second of this, this place, like you’d just...like you’d just rather die--come talk to me before you do anything stupid, all right?”

Klinger blinks at him, confused. “Sir?”

“It’s not worth talking about until then. But if it happens, you need to come see me.” If Klinger meant it, Hawkeye could get him out of Korea and back to Toledo in a snap. It wouldn’t even be that big of a trick, in the grand scheme of things. But a part--a tiny, well buried part--of Klinger needs to stay, despite all of his bluster. For now, Korea gives him a purpose. So, Hawkeye has never bothered to try. 

Klinger has his _‘you_ are actually the insane one’ face on. “Sure, sir. Sure. Maybe after you talk to Potter you should try to get some sleep.”

“I _was_ asleep before you got here,” Hawkeye replies with faux grumpiness. Klinger just rolls his eyes at him and continues to lead the charge toward the waiting Colonel. 

Hawkeye follows a few steps behind and watches him for a while, enjoying the way the garish print of his blouse shifts with the movement of his hairy arms. It’s mesmerizing, and Hawkeye is nearly half-asleep again by the time they reach the Colonel’s office doors.

“Colonel!” he says, brightly, trotting right through them. “You wanted to harangue me?”

\--

A man dies on his table the next morning. They have a ninety-seven percent rate of success. That means for every hundred men they see, three die. It never gets easier. Hawkeye spent his first year of working the tables in the OR thinking that it might, that he would eventually become numb to the pain of each human loss. Now he knows that numbness is in itself an emotion--and not one he should wish for, either. 

“Damn,” he says, and swallows down the sudden tightness in his throat as he steps away and yanks off his bloody gloves and resists the urge to hit something. “ _Damn_.”

They take the body away. He is given a new soldier to stitch back together, and then another. And another. It’s six more hours before they see the end of the sea of wounded, before he can stumble out of the OR and peel off all of his surgical gear (white clothes off, green clothes on). The lurking ghost follows him as Hawkeye steps out into the night.

The dead soldier is scared. They usually are, especially when they have to wait around for a while. He’s been drifting around the OR all evening, hovering around his own body, at first, and then--upon realizing the futility of the action--hovering around his fellow soldiers with anxious, nervous eyes, as if expecting any moment that one of his buddies will be next.

“It’s all right, Private,” Hawkeye says. He used to have a fancy speech to recite at them, but it doesn’t fit right in his mouth, anymore. Maybe it’s a translation issue--it doesn’t sound right unless spoken in the original Greek. Instead, he reaches out to the man--the boy, really. Hawkeye grips his shoulders and meets his eyes, as earnest as he ever is, as genuine as he can ever be. “It’s going to be all right.”

The dead man opens his mouth. He speaks. Hawkeye watches his lips, but he’s never gained the knack for reading them, even after all this time. He shakes his head. “Sorry, kid. The words of the departed are not for the ears of the likes of me. I can’t hear you. Don’t worry, I’ve been doing this long enough that I can usually guess. You want to know what happens now, right? The truth is, I don’t know. Death isn’t my purview. I just own the roads. That’s my speciality. How to get from Point A--” he waves an arm, encompassing all of the living world “--to Point B.” The glow he now points to is very bright. It hovers in the air before them, a giant gash in the fabric of reality. It tears the horizon asunder, the light fierce and beautiful to behold. 

The soldier stumbles back at the sight of this gateway. Hawkeye moves to stand behind him. He puts up and his hands and presses them against the ghost’s retreating back. Holds him steady (he doesn’t like to think of it as holding them captive). “You know the old saying,” Hawkeye says, blithely. He kicks off his untied black boots, toeing them aside. He’ll pick them up later, on his way back. “Go toward the light.”

The soldier is trembling. Hawkeye leans forward and rests his chin on the dead man’s shoulder. He listens. Not to the man’s words, which make no sound, or his breath, which is an illusion, anyway, and similarly silent. He closes his eyes and listens to the man’s life, hidden threads of his personal tapestry, woven together and then snipped free by the three sisters of Fate. 

The Private is worried about those he leaves behind. His mother, his father, his three little sisters. His sweetheart, his friends, his buddies on the tables who lived to return to the front. Hawkeye smiles. It’s rare to find a soul who will spend these moments thinking of something other than his own unknown future. “They’ll be fine,” he assures the kid, right up against his ear. Slowly, the soldier stops shaking. “They’ll miss you, don’t get me wrong. But they’ll get through it, day by day. Your mom and dad are going to start up a scholarship in your honor, you know, to make up for that degree you never got to finish. Your littlest sister will clean off your marker every day. Your girl’s going to meet a nice young man a few years from now. She’ll learn to love him and they’ll be together a good, long time. Their first born son will get your name. The middle one, but that’s still something, isn’t it? That’s right. Let go. Let them go, Private.”

Hawkeye does not, in fact, have the gift of prophecy, and the only tapestries he can read are the ones of the dead who stand near him. It doesn’t matter. Lies are his speciality, and these particular lies are meant to be kind. For all he knows, some of them might even come true.

The soldier pulls away first. Hawkeye lets him. Hawkeye tugs his thin, olive drab coat around himself more securely--the gash in the world causes a terrible draft--and waves his hand in the direction of the glow. “We should get a move on. That’s right, I’m going with you. Don’t worry. I’ve done this before--many, many times. I know the way better than the back of my own hand.” He’s had his hand for thousands of years. He knows it very well, indeed. 

Hawkeye leads the way by a step, the dead man right behind him. Passing through the threshold of the light always gives him goosebumps and makes the hair on his neck stand up, but he presses on. The Private looks around, eyes round with surprise. Hawkeye suspects he’d been expecting the rest of the old saw to be true. “Not exactly a tunnel, is it?” he says, wryly. “But there is a light at the end of it, all right.” He gestures forward, where a new glow sits on the horizon like the setting moon. 

Between here and there is a lot of ground to cover. It’s different for each person, and the Private’s path looks all right. He’s done his best, it seems. The path is smooth and solid and made of finely polished stones laid out in careful rows. The trees are flowered and sway gently in a temperate breeze. The landscape is a damn sight more pleasant than the one they just left behind them, in fact. There are a few ominous markers as they walk--a shifting shadow here, a strange noise there--but overall, it’s one of the nicer souls Hawkeye’s ever travelled. He reaches over and taps the soldier’s shoulder with a gentle fist. The soldier looks on at him in confusion, but Hawkeye just offers his biggest, broadest grin. 

“This is good, kid. Really good.” He wants to say he’s proud of the young man, but that wouldn’t be fair. Hawkeye had nothing to do with this gentle, beautiful walk to the young man’s afterlife. That sort of thing is entirely decided by the actions of the mortal whose life has ended. It’s a nice change, though, to be sure. The last time Hawkeye led a dead man to his final rest, there had been scattered potholes and the rapport of gunfire from somewhere far too close for comfort. War makes minefields of the souls of men--the first lesson that human war ever taught Hawkeye, and one he will never forget.

With no real obstacles, they reach the glow in record time. Hawkeye smiles, offering the Private his hand to shake. “Well, this is where we part company. Don’t worry. It’s just a step from here to there. It’s easy. Like-like falling asleep and into your very best dreams.”

The soldier swallows thickly and glances into the bright, bright light. Hawkeye watches with interest as a giant smile breaks out over the his young face. Joy personified. Hawkeye, unable to help himself, tries to take a peek--to see whatever paradise this man sees--but, as usual, all he gets for his trouble are sunspots in his vision and a mild headache. 

The young man steps forward without saying goodbye. Hawkeye doesn’t blame him. The dead rarely have a thought to spare for their guide, at the end. He just rubs at his temples, blinking rapidly against the dark spots. When he opens his eyes properly again, he’s standing outside of the OR, staring into a piece of empty space with no ethereal glow in sight. Shakily, he slips his boots back on. He doesn’t bother to tie the laces. His feet ache.

“Hey, Hawk. You feeling okay? You look pale.”

Hawkeye has just traversed the entirety of a man’s soul in a single second and, if only briefly, gazed upon the partition between life and death itself. The exhaustion of endless surgery cannot hold a candle to the bone-weariness he feels in that moment. He smiles at BJ, forcing a gleam to his eye. “It’s all this life-saving. I hate doing it on an empty stomach. Care for a nightcap, Dr. Hunnicutt?”

BJ grins back. “I thought you’d never ask.”

\--

Hawkeye remembers a time when guiding the dead was nothing more than a simple lark, a light duty set by his father to keep him out of trouble. He acted as an escort, traveling on the road to the afterlife whenever his father commanded it. He’d take a simple stroll from the land of the living to the edge of Hades’s domain, chatting up a storm with whatever poor mortal saps had met their timely end. It hadn’t always been _safe_ , of course, or even necessarily pleasant (some people simply cannot accept their own demise) but the journey had never troubled him overly much. He’d been stronger then, perhaps, or the trip itself had been less taxing.

Now, in this modern world, he leads souls not down smooth, spiraling stone steps into the arms of his waiting brother god but, instead, herds them--often _dragging_ the more unwilling ones--across the surreal landscapes of their own subconscious to a nebulous space so sacred and personalized that even he, a _god_ , cannot so much as look at the light for fear of going permanently blind. 

The nature of death has changed, somehow. He has changed with it. It has not been a graceful evolution. In short, it hurts. But he must guide the dead. It is his duty as a god. And to protect himself from the strain of his more divine employment, the only thing ordinary man Dr. Pierce can do is strive to save each life that is laid in his hands. 

\--

Hawkeye wakes in the middle of the night in pain. He turns his head into his pillow to smother his groans. He went to sleep expecting this. He’s tried everything to prevent it, but there’s nothing to be done. Flying the path of the dead is grueling, even when traveling with such a wholesome soul on such a gentle road. His ankles feel badly used. It takes so much effort to stay on the right course, to not lose his grip on the ground with every step. He never feels more human than he does in these moments, left aching and exhausted in a way that a god should never be.

“Hawk?” BJ says, sleepily. Hawkeye gulps, forcing himself to remain still, to fall utterly silent. BJ really _is_ one of his. No one else has ever been bothered by these interruptions, before. Trapper and Frank used to sleep right through his own private agonies, undisturbed. BJ, though, has a knack for knowing what Hawkeye is up to. And he _worries_ more, too. Hawkeye will have to be more careful, a thought that irritates him in this moment. It’s yet another concern of his paltry mortal existence conflicting with the sacred duties of his immortal life.

“Hawk,” BJ repeats. He’s not going to let this go. Hawkeye listens to the rustle as BJ slides out of his own cot, crosses the length of the still, and sits on the edge of Hawkeye’s blankets. The shift in weight causes Hawkeye’s body to roll forward slightly, and a fresh tingle of pain shoots up Hawkeye’s legs. He groans. “What’s wrong?” BJ presses, whispering.

“Charlie horse,” Hawkeye lies. The pain is about approximate, at least. “Don’t worry about it, Beej. Go back to sleep.” 

“Where? Let me help.” BJ is too much of a doctor for his own good. He reaches out to Hawkeye. Hawkeye flinches back reflexively and, gods, does he regret it. He buries his face back in his pillow, breathing loud, his fingernails digging hard into his palms. 

“Sorry, sorry,” BJ whispers. “Just, just hold still a minute.” 

There’s light. A dim glow. A candle. Hawkeye didn’t even know that was there--it’s probably a remnant from one of their recent pranks.

BJ looks at him and accesses the problem with ease. For a medical man just out of residency, his natural intuition is truly astounding. BJ pushes Hawkeye’s wadded up blankets aside and approaches Hawkeye’s feet, tugging up the hems of his non-military pajama bottoms. Hawkeye hisses in pain just as BJ hisses in surprise. 

“The _hell_ ,” the mortal man gasps. At this rate, he’ll wake up Burns. 

“Shut up, Hunnicutt,” Hawkeye groans, struggling to move onto his back, to sit up and regain some dignity. He regrets everything. He should have left the ghost to dither. As far as endless limbos go, the 4077th can’t possibly be that bad. 

Dark purple-blue bruising blossoms around his ankles, the discoloration seeping down and over the tops of his feet. Hawkeye is sorry to see the new damage. He was only just starting to recover from his previous journey, those bruises fading to a comforting, sickly yellow that had only twinged a little when direct pressure was applied.

BJ’s hands ghost over the puffy skin of Hawkeye’s right ankle. Hawkeye grabs at the man’s arm, digging his fingers into BJ’s forearm with such strength that BJ winces in shared pain. BJ turns his head, his expression concerned. “What happened?”

He can’t possibly tell BJ the truth, but for all his propensity for lies, nothing comes to mind. He blames his lack of mental acuity on exhaustion. And pain. And loneliness, too, if he’s going to be keeping a tally anyway. It’d be so nice to tell someone his truth, for once. “It’s not broken,” he says, opting to steer the direction of the conversation somewhere else, instead. “I know they look broken, but they’re not.”

BJ does not seem put at ease by this assessment. “How do you know? Have you had an x-ray?”

No, but that’s an interesting idea. Hawkeye wonders what the images would show. Would the fine bones of his wings be visible? Folded up against his tibia, perhaps? He’s never thought to look. When traveling on the roads of the dead, his astragalar wings are as clear and tangible as the blue of his eyes or the part in his hair. He always kicks off his shoes before stepping into the light because they’d just get in the way of the spread. Here, in the world of mortal man, his wings hide just as he does, intangible as a lie. “Sure I did,” he lies. “Nothing’s broken. It’s just a sprain.”

“A _sprain_?” BJ repeats, incredulous. “How did you manage that? And when?” 

Oh, a series of tricky questions. He’s been with BJ since they left the OR together. BJ hasn’t seen his bare legs in weeks, Hawkeye is pretty sure. The bruising looks too damn fresh to try and pass it off as an older injury, regardless. He rolls the possibilities around in his head for a long beat, wondering how it might sound to explain to the man that he overextended himself hours ago--days ago, as far as traveling time goes--in an in-between world where, technically, time doesn’t even exist. Briefly, he’s tempted to do just that. He pushes the ridiculous idea aside.

“Clumsily,” he hedges, “And not too long ago.”

“Hawkeye,” BJ growls, and freezes when Frank whimpers from his corner, turning over in his sleep. Somehow, BJ seems to recognize that they need to have this conversation in private. He really is a natural. Hawkeye feels very possessive of him, suddenly. A warm glow of affection blooms in his heart, just under his sternum--not medically accurate, but the metaphor is pleasing. Hawkeye opens his mouth and almost tells him the truth. Good sense stops him, however, and he lets his mouth clack shut. He remains silent, staring at BJ with a carefully blank face, betraying nothing.

“Fine. Keep me in the dark,” BJ whispers, “But you need treatment. Right now. I’m going to go get the wheelchair.”

“No, don’t,” Hawkeye says, equally quietly. “I can walk. I can. Just, just help me stand up.”

When BJ offers his shoulder to lean on, Hawkeye doesn’t hesitate to do so, and he leans hard.

\--

Post-op is out of the question, so they hit up the supply tent, instead. Hawkeye is fond of the supply tent. He’s spent many a carnal hour there with a few of the nurses and some of the more ambulatory wounded before they ship out. BJ isn’t looking for that sort of fun, however. Hawkeye sighs, resigned, and sits down against a nearby shelf when told to do so.

BJ sits on an overturned tub and rests one of Hawkeye’s heels in his lap. His touch is as gentle as possible as he pokes and prods the swollen, discolored patches. It makes Hawkeye’s teeth grind. 

“Breathe, Hawk,” BJ advises in his most measured tone. BJ’s bedside manner is beautiful. Hawkeye has spent many sleepless nights thinking about it. Hawkeye lets go of the breath he’s holding.

“I’m going to need some ice,” BJ says. Hawkeye nods. He knows. It’s the standard routine for this kind of injury. Ice, elevation, a tight bandage. It _will_ help. Hawkeye often takes those exact precautions after a journey himself, in fact. There’s something comforting, however, about having someone he trusts do it, instead. 

A while later Hawkeye finds himself back in his cot, his legs supported above his head by a mound of extra blankets, the skin of his ankles and feet cold through with pilfered ice. He sighs, feeling a bit like a trussed up chicken. “BJ?” he whispers.

“Yeah?” BJ yawns. 

“Thanks for your help.”

BJ shifts on his cot, the better to face Hawkeye’s own earnest gaze. “Mm, what’re friends for?”

Friends. Hawkeye feels warm inside and out. He has many friends in Korea, and he’s counted BJ among them from the start. But it’s still good to hear it said out in the open like that. 

“Beej?”

“What, Hawk?” He sounds a bit annoyed. He probably wants to go back to sleep. 

“Nevermind,” Hawkeye says. The truth sits right there on his tongue, desperate to be free. It makes his teeth ache to hold it in. He swallows heavily, though, and lets the opportunity pass. 

\--

He remembers his old life only sometimes, and only in brief, visceral flashes brought on by triggers in his current reality. Sometimes, a whiff of cheap wine will hit his nose at the O.C. and he’ll flinch back, recalling a soiree with Dionysus and a good dozen wood nymphs eons ago. He’ll catch the haunted, defeated gaze of a once sunny soldier passing through and think of Apollo with a pang of sorrow and regret. He dreams of Medusa, from time to time, of handing over his helmet of invisibility to some dumb kid and signing her death warrant--the end of her suffering, he told himself at the time, but now he admits it was even for him unusually cruel. 

It’s thousands of years of memory, patchwork and threadbare, and there are many nights he wishes he could just forget it all entirely and commit himself fully to the equally threadbare human self he pretends to be.

\--

Charles Emerson Winchester the III is a stark contrast to Frank Burns. Hawkeye spends most of the man’s first week jumping at the sound of his voice, expecting nasally stupidity and finding cultured pomposity, instead. 

BJ corners Hawkeye one night while Charles is away. “Are you all right? Every time you see Charles you look like you’re going to jump out of your skin. What’s going on?”

Hawkeye shrugs, glancing to the side. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid, and you’ll definitely laugh.”

“You miss Frank, don’t you?” BJ asks, with a neutral tone. He sees and knows so much. Hawkeye loves and hates him for it in equal measure, feeling exposed but also loved in a way he hasn’t since--well, perhaps ever.

Hawkeye shakes his head. “No. I do not _miss_ Frank. But...yeah. I do. A little. I miss everyone who leaves, that’s all.”

BJ squeezes his shoulder and lets the conversation go, and he doesn’t talk to Hawkeye for several hours after that. Hawkeye figures BJ is thinking about Trapper John, a man he has never met but whose essence still lingers over Hawkeye like a second shadow. Trapper, Henry, Frank, Spearchucker, and a handful of nurses who’ve come and gone. He misses them and he envies them in turn. Pieces of his found family, gone. And then replaced, just like that. The efficiency of the American military. No one is irreplaceable. Not even Hawkeye himself, and he’s a god. (...Or he’s a figment of a god’s imagination, built out of forged papers and bullshit. It’s all in how you look at it.)

Over time, Charles finds his footing in the camp. He establishes himself as the man who misses Tokyo and longs for the world of sanitized medicine far away from the consequences of war. He wants to get out, and he’ll do whatever it takes to do it. Hawkeye listens to him moan and scheme and wonders, sometimes, if Charles realizes just how similar he and Klinger are in their desires--if they’ll ever be able to cross the lines of social class and distaste between them to figure that out. 

“Pierce,” Charles drawls one muggy afternoon during a long lull, “If you must stare at me for hours on end, can you at least do so _quietly_?”

Hawkeye startles. He hadn’t realized he was staring, let alone staring and making soft, thoughtful sounds. “Sorry, Charles,” he says, deflecting, “It’s just the way the light’s reflecting off your head. It’s dazzling.”

Charles rubs awkwardly at his bare scalp before clearing his throat and quickly pulling his fingers back down again. “Cretin,” he snaps, pretending he wasn’t goaded into the motion. 

Hawkeye grins. “That’s the third time you’ve called me that this week. I’ve come to expect more of your immense vocabulary.” 

Charles huffs a breath and goes back to reading his precious paper. “In this heat? You’re not worth the effort.”

“I’m wounded to the quick,” Hawkeye retorts. “However will I cope?”

BJ strolls into the Swamp, idly toweling at his still-damp hair. His face is a bit red. “Nothing like a boiling hot shower on a boiling hot day.” They shower with collected rainwater. The big metal tanks get warm in the sun. Hawkeye winces in sympathy and decides to forgo the showers for a few more days himself.

“I for one welcome the opportunity for increased sterilization,” Charles says. “The fewer germs the two of you track in and out of this filthy pit the better.”

BJ and Hawkeye trade glances. They’re still getting used to Charles’s insults. He’s certainly a step above Frank Burns in his ability to express his contempt. 

“Hey,” Hawkeye says, “You’re not exactly inherently sterile yourself, Charles. We all scrub up one arm at a time.”

“Hm, yes. In the OR. In this...Swamp,” Charles draws out the word with care, “such standards no longer exist.”

“Well, you know what they say: There’s no hovel like home,” BJ says, brightly. He tosses his wet towel on his cot and leaves it there to fester entirely out of spite. Hawkeye appreciates the thought, but he thinks the action will backfire on BJ sooner rather than later. Mold grows with great tenacity in the Swamp.

Charles ignores them both. 

Hawkeye and BJ fall into their usual banter, but every now and again Hawkeye looks askance at their new bunkie in a more surreptitious examination than before. Charles is exactly the sort of blowhard whose bubble Hawkeye would like to pop, and he has plans to that effect. At the same time, Hawkeye recognizes the stiff, wounded curve of the man’s shoulders and he wonders, fleetingly, what it must be like to suffer through this war utterly alone, completely removed from anyone else who can possibly understand.

\--

In his dreams, he flies. They’re only dreams. Hawkeye Pierce is the grounded sort, the kind of man who keeps his eyes on his feet and never looks up at the stars to wonder what might be looking back at him. He’s an agnostic. A flippant non-believer with no faith left to give. It’s the perfect cover for a forgotten deity. If nothing else, it keeps him out of the camp’s mocked-up church, away from the overbearing, rigid words of a god--excuse _him_ , a God, with a capital G--whom Hawkeye has never personally met.

Sometimes, though, Father Mulcahy still gives Hawkeye a real run for his money. 

“If you ever want to talk, Hawkeye--in-in a secular sense, of course--I’m happy to listen.” 

They’re just stepping out of the OR. Hawkeye is bone-weary and probably looks it. Conversely, the young priest is as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. He often seems to run on the fervor of his vocation alone. Or perhaps it really is his God who sustains him. Hawkeye is afraid to ask for fear of finding himself on the receiving end of a well-meant sermon.

Hawkeye smiles at the priest. For all that their philosophies are so opposed, Hawkeye likes Mulcahy. He’s not the tricky sort at all, but he looks at life with a cheer and hopefulness that Hawkeye finds inspiring, if impossible to replicate. And, besides, Mulcahy’s heart is always in the right place. _And_ he’s absolutely adorable, to boot. 

“Do I look like I need to make a confession, Father?”

“Well, you do seem a bit troubled lately, my son.”

Hawkeye shrugs. He is troubled, it’s true. For four days, he’s been shadowed by a silent spectre, hounded at his still-mangled heels by yet another lost ghost. This one came to them DOA, his soul already expelled and sitting, impatiently, on his body’s obliterated chest. The sight of him in the ambulance bus had made Hawkeye shout and stumble back in surprise, which had not been easy to explain away to the curious eyes around him. It’s not often that ghosts come to him in such a manner. Hawkeye doesn’t mind the company so much, but the gaze of the silent dead man is growing more accusatory with every passing hour. All through their round in the OR, the spectre watched Hawkeye as if daring him to slip up and add to the queue of waiting deceased. 

“It’s nothing, Father. Just a bit of wartime blues. Nothing a few hours with the Swamp still won’t fix.”

“If you change your mind--.”

“--You’ll be the first to know.” Hawkeye passes the priest by with a friendly pat to his black-clad shoulder. 

\--

“Look, I want to help. I will help. I just can’t, yet.” Hawkeye tells the glowering dead man for what feels like the hundredth time. He’s been on his feet in surgery for seventeen hours. He’d leaned bodily on the gurney all through working on his final patient, gritting his teeth through the ache. His attending nurse had frowned at him in mixed parts concern and disapproval; she’d probably thought him hungover or worse. BJ’s not the only one who knows something is up, now. The camp gossip mill will be churning on this for days. He wonders if Potter will want to drill him about it and, if so, when. He’d like to catch a nap beforehand. 

The impatient dead man has been left waiting for an entire week. His ire is palpable. It fills the whole of the empty Swamp, suffocating. Hawkeye has to remind himself to breathe.

When Hawkeye goes to collect his mail from the nightstand, the ghost tries to sock him in the jaw. Hawkeye jumps back in alarm. The motion jars his aching legs and he hisses, annoyed. He growls his frustration, bends over, and starts to furiously untie his boots. After some scrambling, Hawkeye pulls off one of the well-worn boots and the drab gray sock beneath. “Look!” he says, pointing, lifting his bared leg as high as he can. “Do you see? Do you? I can’t go with you, yet! It’s too much, too soon!”

The ghost glares at him in challenge, unimpressed by the faded, mottled colors of the aging bruises. Hawkeye’s bruises are healing as well as can be expected, actually. He could probably make another trip just fine, if he really concentrated. He knows it, and the dead man does, too. Hawkeye closes his eyes, about to give in.

“Hawkeye?”

The ghost jerks back, as startled by the interruption as Hawkeye is. Hawkeye lets his still-hovering foot drop, unable to keep the awkward expression of guilt off his face. He feels rather like he assumes a child would, caught in the act of plucking wings off of a captive butterfly. 

The priest looks at him, the picture of concern. “Are you all right? You were...yelling.” The man’s eyes dart down to Hawkeye’s feet--one boot on, one boot off--and he gasps softly. “Oh, my. That looks terrible.”

“It’s better than it was, Father,” Hawkeye admits, ignoring the way this pronouncement makes the ghost snarl in frustration. “A lot better. Don’t worry.”

“But what _happened_?”

Hawkeye sighs. He sits down on his cot and replaces--with some difficulty--his sock and his boot. He ties the laces very loosely. He won’t be wearing the boot long. “You know how it is. Just a classic Hawkeye Pierce antic gone awry. Listen, Father, I’d love to catch up, but there’s actually something I need to go do.”

“Oh! Is it an emergency?”

“Feeling more and more that way all the time,” Hawkeye says. He waves the ghost after him as he leaves the Swamp. “Feel free to help yourself to the gin.”

Father Mulcahy trails after him for a few steps, and for a moment Hawkeye fears that the man will decide to sink his teeth in and not let go. In the end, however, his natural acquesiance wins out. “I’ll, ah, see you later, Hawkeye?”

“Sure, Father,” Hawkeye says, distractedly. “My door is always open to you.”

“Except for when it’s not,” the priest mutters, looking pointedly to the still-swinging door of the Swamp and Hawkeye’s retreating back.

\--

Hawkeye leads his dead man a ways out of the main camp. It’s broad daylight out and a nice, temperate day. A few nurses stand across the way, one of them washing her friend’s hair over a soapy bucket of water. Two enlisted men huddle over a well-worn checker board, muttering. Igor hovers near the mess, sorting scraps out for the stray dogs that sometimes pass through camp. It feels like people are everywhere, just waiting to pounce on him. He walks up the stone steps in the hill toward the chopper pad. It’s deserted at this hour, and likely to remain so at least long enough for him to open the gate. Once the light shines in, time in the mortal realm will stop. It’s a handy trick, though not one in his control. It’s the magic that the Fates provide to him, the tool he was given as part of his trade, only available to him with the opening of the gates to the paths of the dead.

The ghost takes a wary step back when the bright, glowing gash appears in midair. Hawkeye watches with some amusement as the dead man circles the area on all sides, marveling at how it hangs there. Hawkeye half expects the man to reach up and try to pass his hand over the top of the cut to check for the fishing line holding it up. The soldier refrains, however. 

“Are you ready?” 

It doesn’t surprise Hawkeye that now, in the moment, the dead man comes over shy. This is not the first time he’s witnessed such behavior from impatient souls. They always choke in the final quarter. He sighs, forcing himself to remember the importance of his task, to remember how much he loves these mortal beings and their little, tiny lives. He approaches the big man and rests his chin on his broad shoulder. The soldier startles backward, going so far as to _push_ Hawkeye away. Hawkeye stumbles, only barely managing to catch himself before going down in the dirt.

“Hey! I’m trying to help you, you idiot. Hold still!”

He takes up his place again, moving forward more cautiously, now. When the soldier flinches, Hawkeye reaches over and flicks his ear. “Stop it. I’m not after your honor, you porridge-brained brute. I’m listening. Just _listening_ , that’s all. You want to go to your final reward or not?”

The man frowns, but this time he holds still. Hawkeye puts his chin down on the man’s wide shoulder--no easy feat, considering the brute’s height--and closes his eyes. He listens for it, the strange, musical thrum of the strings of Fate’s loom. He sees all the vital pieces of the man’s past very clearly. A father back home--an equally giant man with a tight jaw and angry eyes. “So, you joined up out of self-defense, huh? Don’t get all tense, King Kong. I’ve heard of worse reasons--Like the draft.” He goes silent, still listening. None of what he hears is pleasing on the ear. It’s a discordant screech, the experiences of a man who could never catch a break, who let his circumstances turn him bitter and hard. Who went to war to work off the tension. He’s the kind of man who delights in the bloodshed of the battlefield just for the feeling of control it provides. This journey, Hawkeye knows without a doubt, is going to be a bad one.

Hawkeye sighs and steps away. “Come on, Sarge,” he says, taking a moment to marvel that such a hothead ever got so high in the ranks, that the man didn’t die even earlier from sheer foolhardy recklessness, that none of his superiors ever looked at him and thought ‘gee, maybe this kid is trouble.’ It doesn’t matter. It’s too late for all of that, anyway. Whatever damage this man has done is done. It’s as over as it can get. Well...almost. “Time for the final bell, soldier.”

Hawkeye tries to lead the way. The ghost struggles and drags his feet. He’s strong. Hawkeye is stronger, though he rarely puts that strength to the test. He grips the dead man by the arm and pulls him through the cool, tingling threshold of the light.

Hawkeye gags the moment they step through. The air is noxious. Breathing burns his sinuses, his throat, his lungs. He pulls the neck of his t-shirt up over his face. It helps, if only a little. He looks over at the dead man. The soldier gasps and chokes, too, eyes gone red and streaming in the fetid air. Hawkeye pulls off his coat and hands it to the man. When the dead man only looks on at him in confusion, Hawkeye takes initiative and ties the rough olive fabric around the ghost’s mouth and nose. The dead man doesn’t _need_ to breathe, technically. The dead man is dead and cannot truly be harmed, not even by the shadows of his own subconscious. But now is not the time to explain that to him. Hawkeye knows that the value of a good placebo is in the lie of it being utterly believed.

“Breathe shallowly!” he cautions, shouting. He has to shout. There’s a noise. A persistent, terrifying sound that makes Hawkeye feel like he needs to run, run, run. It takes him a moment to recognize the droning sound as the whirling noise of landing choppers. He’s been conditioned--that noise means action. 

Hawkeye looks around, trying to gauge their best options, trying to get whatever bearings he can. It’s like the journey he took before the last one, but shockingly worse. The path is all but gone. Obscured by overgrown, thorny brambles. Stymied by deep-dug trenches full of rotting bits of bodies and bracketed by barbed wire. The sky burns red with distant fires. Through the haze and the distance, Hawkeye can’t even _see_ the glow of the light at the end of this proverbial tunnel. 

“Well, the good news is, I’ve actually seen worse.” A whopper of a lie. “The bad news is, if you want to make it to your eternal rest, buddy, you’re going to have to do as I say. _Exactly_ as I say. Can you do that?”

The force of the dead man’s glower is weakened somewhat by his still-streaming eyes. Military man or not, he doesn’t seem to care much about Hawkeye’s inherent authority. Maybe because Hawkeye is just a doctor. Maybe because the Sergeant himself is dead. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Hawkeye sighs. “Just...just stay near me, all right?” 

Hawkeye takes a step forward. The ground under his feet explodes without warning, throwing him and the ghost back with concussive force. They fall hard on unforgiving, jagged stones. Hawkeye feels something in his shoulder crack. “ _Fuck_ , the _fuck_ ,” he groans from the ground. Landmines. This man’s soul is a _literal_ minefield. He’s boobytrapped. 

Hawkeye scrambles into a sitting position and curses again. He can’t move his left arm. For a second, just the briefest of moments, he seriously considers leaving the dead man to rot in this eternal torment of his own making, the light at the end of it be damned. He’s sure he can get out on his own without the burden of this man’s rotten spirit holding him back. He could leave this ghost here to linger forever, entirely unable to reach his final place of rest. Who would know? Who would care? There’s no one left except himself.

He pushes the unworthy thought aside. Slowly, painfully, he eases himself out of his t-shirt. He rips the fabric with his teeth, putting together a makeshift sling. He has to sacrifice it as a gas mask to do so, but needs must. While he works, he looks over at the dead man. “You all right?”

Ghosts are hardy. Whatever damage they suffer is more of the mind--a product of the memory of pain and injury--than of the flesh. The Sergeant’s breathing, for example, is unnecessary, no more ‘real’ than the poison in the air that is currently stifling it. Still, it’s possible something has gone wrong. It’s Hawkeye’s job to make sure that the dead man makes it to his light in one piece. The soldier sits up slowly. He’s bleeding from a split lip--an _illusion_ of a split lip, in truth--but nothing more. Hawkeye nods. “Good. All right.” 

The sling is rudimentary at best, but it will at least keep the useless limb from getting in his way. “Come stand on the right side of me. Come on, come on. It’s not a trick, you ninny. I can’t grab for you with my left hand, now. If you stand on my right, you’ll be safer. I promise you.”

The dead man’s expression is easy to read even without the help of words. 

“Yeah, I know. I admit, I haven’t made a great first impression. In my defense, though, Sarge, that mine there is all on you.”

The Sergeant frowns. He looks at the mangled path before them, at Hawkeye, and back again. He points to himself, eyebrows raised in a ‘who, me?’ gesture. 

Hawkeye nods. He makes a grand wave with his good arm and immediately regrets it. “This--ow--this is all you, kid. Sergeant Brute, this is your life!” 

Hawkeye watches as the soldier’s glower softens into an expression of pure horror. He points roughly toward the warzone before them, then again at himself, disbelieving. 

“I mean it. Way over there, somewhere I can’t even see it, is your final destination. Your eternal resting place, whatever that might be. But between here and there? This is the path you built with your own two hands. Every bad thought, every cruel action, every hard word built between you and paradise. It’s all here, an obstacle to your happiness.”

After this pronouncement, the soldier gets more easy to boss around. He remains sullen, but when Hawkeye tells him to move a step to the left, he does. Hawkeye is glad for small favors. He takes a step forward, this time keeping an eagle eye out for disturbances in the dirt. Slowly, inch by inch, they progress. Hawkeye reaches out with his good hand and bodily pulls the soldier back just before his foot can crush another waiting mine. Hawkeye pushes the man down in the face of sudden gunfire--a sniper with no corporeal face or earthly motivation hidden in the dark, ominous shadows around them. When the bullets stop, he drags the ghost to his feet and steers him at a dead run for the safety of the nearest overturned Jeep. Hawkeye puts himself between the ghost and a shower of dirt, blowback from a mine set off by the force of a sudden, burning wind. In short, Hawkeye leads. The dead man follows. About halfway--or, at least, what Hawkeye hopes is halfway--they stumble across the first major obstacle to their progress. There, a gash in the world, sits a giant trench wider than any Hawkeye has ever seen in the real, mortal world. Hawkeye sighs and then eases himself down into the enormous, impassable trench, pushing the unrecognizable bits of human gore aside as he wades from one canyon wall to the other. This trench has recently been bombed. Blood-soaked muck seeps into his pant legs, and he tries not to think about the sensation of it. Illusion or no, it _smells_ like the OR on a busy summer day. Once on the other side of the canyon, he climbs up and disturbs the stacked-up barbed wire border as best he can, weighing the dangerous barbs down with handfuls of wet mud. To his shock, after several long minutes of this struggle, the soldier jumps in behind him and, with a nod of acknowledgement, helps him with the work. From that point on, the soldier actively helps to work as a team, and progress is much faster. 

Miles and miles later, Hawkeye curses and cries out, digging his bare heels deep into the mud, pulling back with all his might. The dead man scrambles, his own booted feet digging big gashes in the side of the muddy trap in which he’s fallen. Deadly-looking wooden spikes jut out from the bottom of the pit. The big hole had been hard to notice, covered as it was with a woven tarp, a layer of inconspicuous mud spread over the top. Hawkeye has heard of such guerilla tactics in the wilds of Korea, but he’s never seen one himself. He’s glad, considering. The only thing keeping the dead man from becoming a pincushion is Hawkeye’s good arm, which is currently being wrenched out of its socket. “Come on, come on,” he says through gritted teeth. “Gods, they ought to start putting cleats on those _damn_ boots.”

Finally, the soldier finds purchase. With a series of silent grunts, he scrambles up and over Hawkeye, who falls on his back in the mud and simply lies there a while, staring up at the ominous red sky, panting in the poisoned air and not even caring, anymore, how much his lungs rally against every molecule of spoiled, burning breath. 

The soldier sprawls beside him, also breathing hard. 

“You don’t--you don’t even need to--need to breathe,” Hawkeye informs him, around labored gasps. “It’s all--it’s in in your--it’s all--” he decides to let the subject drop while he’s ahead. To his credit, the soldier’s ragged breathing does seem to level out, some, at Hawkeye’s admonishment. The soldier stumbles to his feet and offers Hawkeye a hand. Hawkeye staggers to his feet and falls clumsily into his charge. He expects to get pushed away again, but the larger man stands firm, holding him up. 

“I can’t--just give...just give me--.” Hawkeye chokes on his own breath, falling into a coughing fit. When he can finally stand on his own power again, he rubs the back of his hand over his damp lips on reflex. His knuckles come back smeared with foamy red. Hawkeye swallows thickly and rubs the evidence away on his sodden, muddy pants. 

He looks ahead. For the very first time, he can see the faintest glimmer of the final light. He would whoop for joy if he had the strength. Instead, he claps the dead man on the shoulder and points silently ahead with two fingers. He offers the man a broad grin. The soldier looks startled--probably at the remnants of blood on Hawkeye’s teeth--but nods in recognition of his silent gesture. They’re nearly there.

There are fewer pitfalls in the long length of the path that lies before them, a fact that Hawkeye notices but is too tired to consider with any real focus. He’s just grateful for the reprieve. With any luck, by the time they reach the threshold of the soldier’s light, the dead man will see nothing in its glow but peace and comfort ahead of him for all eternity. Hawkeye hopes so, he really does. He cannot imagine the agony of having to force a screaming, terrified soul into the blaze of their own waiting hell. He’s never had to, yet, and he hopes to any of his fellow gods who might remain to listen that the opportunity never comes. 

“H-hope for you yet, Brute,” Hawkeye mumbles. He sways on his feet as everything goes abruptly blurry around him. The soldier lunges forward, slings his arm around Hawkeye’s back to keep him from sprawling right down in the dirt. “Oh. I’m--I’m okay. I’m okay. Just...give me a second.”

The soldier is closer than ever to eternal rest, to the light that calls to him. He glances over at it a few times in clear longing. But he doesn’t move, he doesn’t leave Hawkeye in the dust. He remains still as stone, holding Hawkeye upright while the man chokes out wracking coughs and spits bloody fluid on the dry, barren ground. 

“Still tastes b-better than fried chicken night in the--in the mess,” Hawkeye jokes, running his tongue over his coated teeth. He swallows hard and pulls back from the soldier for a second time, managing to stay upright on his own two feet. “Okay. Let’s go.”

They encounter only the barest of troubles--a few grasping brambles, some half-hearted machine gun fire--in the remaining stretch of the dead man’s road. By the time the light is clearly in sight, glowing for all its worth, all that lies between them and it is a few yards of flat, clear, clean, hard-packed dirt. Hawkeye trips over his own bare feet as they walk. The soldier stops, steadying him with a broad hand spread warm against Hawkeye’s chest. The ghost ducks his head a bit to meet Hawkeye’s eyes. He says something, perhaps forgetting that Hawkeye can’t hear him. Even without the words, even through the new, persistent ringing in Hawkeye’s ears, however, he can piece the meaning together. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, faintly, too tired to be prideful. “All right.” 

The big, brutish soldier picks Hawkeye up like he’s delicate, fragile as an egg. If he finds Hawkeye’s weight too much to bear, he doesn’t show it. He holds him like a medic would carry a wounded man, keeping Hawkeye’s lolling head tucked in, careful of his dangling bare feet. Hawkeye closes his eyes, lulled into a near sleep by the steady rocking of the man’s steps. 

He wakes up only when the rhythm of the rocking changes. He blinks, taking stock. They have arrived at the light. The soldier has laid him down on his back. Hawkeye watches, bemused, as the dead man unties Hawkeye’s borrowed jacket from his own face and carefully folds it into a neat pillow, slipping it under Hawkeye’s head. The big man then kneels down beside Hawkeye, not touching him, but watching him with uncertain eyes.

Hawkeye struggles to sit up. He barely manages, reaching out and clawing at the ghost’s arms to pull himself upright. “The light, Brute,” he says, insistent, pointing at it with his chin. “It’s over. You did it. Go into the light.”

The soldier looks over at the glow but then returns his gaze immediately to Hawkeye. Frowning slightly, he points at Hawkeye’s chest. 

“Huh?”

The soldier points again. 

It’s embarrassing how long it takes for Hawkeye to realize the trouble. He’d have never expected such hesitance from any dead man standing on the very edge of peaceful eternity, let alone _this_ one. “I’m fine! I’m fine. When you--when you go through the light, that’s it. I get sent home. I’ll be fine. Don’t--don’t just--.” Hawkeye trails off, smothering another cough.

The soldier reaches forward. His calloused hand still feels warm against Hawkeye’s heaving chest. His eyes are definitely troubled, now. Where all the glowering, bitter resentment was before, Hawkeye can only see a sort of befuddled, curious concern. Hawkeye turns his head, looking back the way they’ve come. There it is, hundreds of miles of the worst kind of hell sprawling, ominous and terrible, behind them. But here, right at the edge of the light, he sees nothing but smooth and even road. Hawkeye even spots the barest beginnings of gentle, leafy trees growing up from the dirt, right near the edge of the doorway. His eyes swim with sudden tears, chest tight with more than just agony. He gives the soldier his biggest, toothiest grin.

“Aw, geez, you big galoot. I’m so--so proud of you. I’d give you a hug if I didn’t think you’d sock me in the jaw--.”

Hawkeye yelps--more in surprise than pain--as the dead man’s arms embrace him warmly, one meaty hand cradling the back of his skull. When the ghost pulls away, he’s smiling, too. It’s the first time Hawkeye’s ever seen him smile. It’s nice.

“You--you gotta go, Brute,” Hawkeye says, waving limply at the glow. “Whatever is on the other side, now, you deserve it.”

The soldier nods and gets to his feet. He turns bodily toward the light, staring into it. Hawkeye watches his profile with just a touch of worry, afraid that it may not have been enough, after all. That hidden dangerous and terrible demons may yet linger in the man’s afterlife. His concern melts away, however, as the dead man smiles again, tears of happiness trailing down his cheeks.

“Don’t forget to write,” Hawkeye says in parting, watching the man disappear. The glow flares and Hawkeye looks quickly away from it. The last thing he needs is a headache on top of everything else.

\--

When he comes to, he’s alone and lying on his back on the chopper pad. He should move. A chopper may come and land on him, if he doesn’t. He blinks. The sky is blue, not fire-y red. He hasn’t seen clear blue sky in a very long time. He lies there for an age, an incalculable number of minutes. He’s forgotten how the actual passage of time feels. 

“Hawkeye? There you are! Hawkeye, the Colonel--Oh, dear Lord! Hawkeye!” 

Blue eyes replace blue skies. Father Mulcahy never knows when to leave well enough alone, but Hawkeye isn’t bothered that he clearly followed him here. He’s missed the nosy man. Hawkeye smiles up at him. The priest rears back in alarm. Hawkeye wonders if there’s still blood on his teeth. Sometimes, he carries little things with him, especially when journeys are as long and difficult as the one he just survived. The remains are usually nothing more serious than the ugly bruises on his ankles that has BJ so concerned. 

“Father,” he says, and his voice comes out all rough around the edges, to his own surprise. “You-did you follow me home? Because I don’t--I don’t think Potter will let me keep you.” It’s hard to get the words out. He feels a heavy weight on his chest. Is Mulcahy leaning on his ribs? It doesn’t feel very nice. 

“Hawkeye, just stay still. I’m going to go get help.” 

“Sure, Father,” Hawkeye says agreeably. “I’ll just stay here.” He giggles, not sure what’s funny, but certain that somewhere _something_ is.

It’s quiet, once the priest is gone. Hawkeye has forgotten how quiet it can be. That amuses him, a little. He’s lying sprawled out in the middle of a landing pad _made_ for helicopters and, for the first time in eons, there’s no chopper’s roar thrumming in his ears. The quiet, he decides, is good. He dozes for a moment in the silence, comforted by it.

“Pierce, can’t you ever manage to stay out of trouble?” Colonel Potter’s rough tone makes Hawkeye wince. Because the dead can’t talk, no one’s been able to yell at him for a while, either. That, he hasn’t missed.

Slowly, he opens his eyes. It’s not easy. His eyelids are as heavy as stone. “Colonel.” He tries to lift a hand, offer the man a placating salute, perhaps, but his fingers won’t do more than twitch. 

BJ hovers above him then. He looks blurry with Hawkeye’s eyelids in the way, but the worried crease between his eyebrows is easy to recognize. Hawkeye surrenders to the man’s examination. Fingers at his pulse points, stethoscope to his chest. Fingertips gently prying apart his mouth. BJ practically growls in frustration at the results. “Colonel, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I--his breathing is wet and labored. The tissues are inflamed. He’s got mild blistering in his throat _and_ around his lips. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s been victim of a low-grade chemical attack.”

“What in the name of War Admiral happened to his hands? Not to mention his damn _feet_.”

Hawkeye can guess how his feet might look. He can almost feel the individual bones of his wings, they ache so much. But his hands? He frowns in concentration, forcing one of them to lift. Ah, there. Shallow lacerations, sluggishly bleeding. His souvenir from the countless barbed wires.

“Beej?” he asks.

“Yeah, Hawk,” BJ says. He’s so close that Hawkeye can smell his aftershave. It’s a damn sight better than the fumes of the mustard gas.

“M’shoulder. Left one. It ok?”

“Your _shoulder_?” BJ echoes. He’s sounding a bit harried. Gently, he probes the socket of Hawkeye’s shoulder with his fingers. 

“Not dislocated or broken, but there’s some bruising. Is it tender?”

How on earth is Hawkeye supposed to answer that? _Everything_ hurts.

“Right shoulder?” he presses. 

BJ probes the area before Hawkeye even quite finishes his question. Now _that_ , Hawkeye feels. He yelps, jerking back against the hard ground. 

“Jesus, Hawk. Colonel, he’s got a dislocation on this side. It’s already swelling, I don’t know if we can get it back in without operating.”

Hawkeye lets his tired eyes close completely. It’s getting worse. Before, when he’d first arrived in Korea, ferrying the souls had been taxing, but not overtly so. He’d carried a few aches and pains with him, from time to time, but serious wounds earned on the journey were for him as they were for the dead--illusions, lies, a trick of the mind he easily could ignore. 

Over the past year and a half, things have started to change. It’s the strain of it, he figures. Too many souls, too many trips. Not to mention the added difficulties of modern death. The journey to the afterlife is no longer a simple stroll down to the gates of his brother, no. It’s a trial of self-improvement, a quest of _redemption_. There are too many shattered souls in a warzone, especially in _this_ war. And Hawkeye is too stubborn to surrender those souls quietly. He will not entertain even for a moment what it would have been like to simply frog-march Brute through his terrible pathway and then toss him mercilessly into his self-imposed damnation. Hawkeye’s momentary pain is worth the dead man’s eternal peace. It is.

“Pierce, if you don’t stay conscious, I’m gonna put you in as Officer of the Day for the rest of the war.”

Hawkeye smiles ruefully. “Colonel, always so n-nice to know you care.” He forces his eyes open again. He’s not a military-minded sort, but he does like Colonel Potter and would hate to let the old man down. 

BJ appears at his head, the Colonel at his feet. Hawkeye has no warning at all before they’re grabbing at his clothes and tugging him onto a nearby stretcher. The yanking on his ankles is agony. The yanking on his shoulder is also agony. He just can’t win. 

“We’re going to have a long talk once I’ve put you back together,” BJ promises, rather menacingly.

“Good,” Hawkeye says. “Missed talking to you.” He squints up at the man in apparent thought. “Beej. Have you ever con-considered growing a mustache? I think it’d--think it’d suit you.” It’ll be the biggest prank he’s ever pulled if he can convince BJ he’s serious. 

\--

In the end, he simply prevaricates. He claims selective amnesia. He tells tales so tall and winding that one by one those asking the questions throw up their hands in collective despair and stop nagging him. Providing them all with such a good run around reminds him of older, better days. It’s almost _fun_. 

He’s given time off, regardless. Two weeks as a patient in post-op, then several days of enforced R&R. No one dies during those days, and he’s so grateful for the respite it actually moves him to tears. BJ catches him crying, but he doesn’t press that particular issue. Lots of reasons to cry, in Korea.

He actually enjoys being one of the wounded, in a way. Being among the living, healing soldiers is a comfort. He talks to them, jokes with them, provides a listening ear. From time to time he slips out of his cot and adjusts their tubes, addresses their complaints of pain and boredom as only a doctor can. Ah, maybe _that’s_ why the nurses keep threatening to tie him down--he’d hoped it was for something decidedly more carnal.

When he returns back to the Swamp, there’s a small party in his honor, a celebration made somewhat ironic by how many people not-so-subtly express their sympathies that, despite his injuries, he isn’t being sent back to the states. He plays the part of Hawkeye Pierce, a man glad for his recovered health but equally chagrined by a missed opportunity to return to his longed-for home. In truth, however, all is well, and he has no complaints. He only has one home, and it’s here, at the 4077th, surrounded by all his mortal friends.

There is no place in all of the gods’ creation that he would rather be.

\--

“Thanks for bringing me in on this, sir,” Klinger says as he and Hawkeye make their way back to the swamp, dragging two heavy trash bags behind them in the dirt. It’s late and there aren’t too many people around. Those lingering men and women who do spot the two just ignore them. Everyone at the 4077th is used to the occasional weirdness.

“Sure, Klinger. I know how you’ve been hoping for the opportunity.”

“He does kinda bring it out in folks. You know what he called me yesterday when his mail got all wet ‘cos of the rain?”

“What?”

“Well, I can’t remember most of it--it was a lot of ten-cent words, you know. But it was offensive.”

Hawkeye smiles at his feet, not wanting Klinger to feel like he’s being mocked. (Who knows how he’d choose to enact his revenge?)

“Here’s to soothing your ruffled feathers. Or somebody’s, anyway,” Hawkeye jokes as he pulls the mattress off of Charles’s empty cot. Klinger just rolls his eyes at the lame attempt at humor. He takes up his trash bag and flips it over. Chicken feathers surge from the bag. It had taken ages to collect them all from the humble farmer down the road. Hawkeye wrangles the downy feathers as much as he able into one big pile. It will ruin the prank if any of the downy white and brown shapes are visible.

They empty the two large bags into the cot and carefully place the mattress back on top of its frame. Making Charles’s bed to the man’s exacting expectations takes a good bit of memory and a large amount of finesse, but they manage it. By the time they finish, it is impossible to tell that the bed is a feather bomb, just waiting for the sudden pressure of Charles’s body to activate it. 

“Boy. It’s too bad I probably won’t be here to see it happen,” Klinger says, mournfully.

“I don’t think you’ll miss the aftermath,” Hawkeye assures him. “Charles strikes me as a yeller.”

Klinger grins at the thought. “I know why I want to see that pompous jerk taken down a peg,” he says, “but why are _you_ doing this?”

Hawkeye thinks of Frank Burns and a hundred little pranks, given and received. How the closest he’d ever felt to the weasel of a man was when Frank had successfully managed to pull one over on Hawkeye himself. “I want him to feel like he belongs,” Hawkeyes says truthfully. For some reason, this makes Klinger laugh.

Hawkeye is right. Charles bellows so loud that even Klinger hears it from across the camp and is, apparently, satisfied.

\--

His first night in Korea, in a Jeep on its way to the 4077th, Hawkeye had marveled at the sheer number of dead men wandering the roads. He’d been hard pressed to pay attention to his chatty driver, in fact, too distracted by the all of the ghosts walking along in an unorganized, meandering herd.

“Stop the car!” Hawkeye shouted at the driver. He technically outranked the poor man, and the befuddled soldier had no choice but to slow to a stop and wait as the newly arrived doctor leapt from his seat and disappeared over a hill.

“Sir?” the kid called from behind him. “Sir, there might be mines that way!”

Hawkeye waved a hand at him in dismissal. “Just give me a second! I have to piss.”

The kid sat back, apparently mollified by this explanation, though no less nervous for it. 

Hawkeye ran forward to the front of the pack of dead men. He held his hands up, forcing the ghosts to halt their progress toward--toward what, exactly? Hawkeye felt sure they didn’t know. They were simply walking, following an unnamed pull to nowhere at all. Where _could_ they possibly go without a guide?

“Hey, you have to--you can’t keep going like this. _Where_ are you going?”

Several of the dead men tried to answer his question at once. Hawkeye shook his head in frustration. “Nevermind, I can’t hear you. Stop. Gods, what a mess. All right. We need to do this in an orderly fashion. Stand in a line.” The ghosts stared at him blankly. “ _Move_.”

One by one, he rested his chin on the dead mens’ shoulders and listened. “Like tuning a bad radio signal--you’ve all been wandering around too long together, it’s just a bunch of static. That’s fine, just fine, though, I’ve got enough. Very well, men,” he declared, taking on the mockery of a General’s bossy tone, “Smooth jazz here, classics here, bluegrass h--bad joke, all right, all right. You, you, and you, stand here. You and you, here. And you four there. You ten there. Hey--you two, stop glaring at each other. Sides don’t matter anymore. You’re all on equal footing, now. You’re all dead. The war’s over for you. Get over it. Good, great. I hope I don’t regret this.”

Hawkeye took them one group at a time, keeping men with similar tapestries, similar lives, together. On the other side of every light it was pure chaos, too many unique, individual paths layered over each other, a tangle of final destinations. It made Hawkeye dizzy to even think about it. Keeping the paths in order, walking along one from beginning to end without confusion was not a simple task, but he succeeded. He had felt so much stronger back then and was capable of so much more. He wouldn’t even _dream_ of trying such a risky stunt, now.

One by one, he saw them all home. 

When he’d finally staggered back to the Jeep--hours later, for him, mere minutes for the driver--the soldier frowned at him. “Uh, you okay, Doc?” Hawkeye tried not to feel offended as the young man took a suspicious sniff of Hawkeye’s breath.

“I’m great,” he said, grinning wide. His feet had ached and he was tired to the bones, but his heart soared with satisfaction. Korea needed him, and he was overjoyed to help. Things changed so quickly, living on this planet, existing among these limited and short-lived beings. He’d thought it would be an enjoyable vocation to try for a while--just a chance to spread his wings on new, unknown shores. He should have recognized that first experience for what it was--a bad omen of all the terrible journeys yet to come. 

\--

Three days after what Hawkeye fondly thinks of as The Feather Incident, Hawkeye wakes up to find a vital component of the still has gone missing. It’s no secret who has taken it. Charles can’t stop giggling to himself every time Hawkeye reflexively goes for a drink only to remember the loss. Eventually, with Klinger’s help--the man is truly a marvel at obtaining obscure items for a reasonable price--Hawkeye manages to get his hands on a replacement part. But no one messes with the still and lives to tell the tale. From that moment on, it’s a war within a war.

Hawkeye steals every pair of underwear from Charles’s footlocker and replaces them with pieces of too-small, silky lingerie acquired from a small shop in Tokyo. It brings Hawkeye immense satisfaction the day he realizes that Charles, too stuffy to ever consider going commando, is almost certainly wearing one of the swanky numbers while working in the OR.

Charles steals the laces out of Hawkeye’s sneakers and boots. Hawkeye just slips the shoes on and off, unperturbed, until he finds himself running toward the OR after a heavy rain. His left sneaker sinks into the mud and, when he tugs up, only his socked foot comes along with the motion. Hawkeye performs surgery in muddy, bared feet and takes Colonel Potter’s resulting ire with rather bad grace. 

Hawkeye pushes Charles’s cot under Radar’s rabbit cages.

Charles takes all of Hawkeye’s precious copies of the _Crabapple Cove Courier_ and exchanges them for his cot.

Hawkeye and BJ work together to record over Charles’s most recent message home, throwing in several bad impressions of Charles himself. Charles, having not been made aware of this prank until after his sister had received it and written a letter back (expressing her utter delight at the jest; Hawkeye thinks he could become very fond of Honoria Winchester given half the chance), does not enact his own vengeance for over a month.

Then, Charles bribes one of the prettiest nurses into asking Hawkeye to meet her in the supply tent one Friday night. When Hawkeye gets there, however, he finds himself wrangled by Radar and Father Mulcahy (how can he say no to such earnest faces?) into helping with the bi-monthly inventory. There is no nurse in sight. 

Charles is a man _begging_ for comeuppance by that point, and Hawkeye is more than happy to provide it. Tomorrow, maybe, when he can move again. Charles is on post-op duty right now, anyway. He’s too far away for revenge. 

“Hawk?” BJ prods. BJ is always prodding, these days. And snooping. And generally making a nuisance of himself. 

“G’way. Can’t go to school today. Too drunk,” Hawkeye mumbles. He doesn’t fight it when BJ reaches toward his feet, pulling up the blankets away from his already bare ankles. Hawkeye stopped trying to hide the damage to his feet ages ago. He has a whole litany of excuses and bald-faced lies built up, instead, and he uses them liberally. The most recent dead man’s journey had been a bad one, made worse for how the imagery of his failures, unlike all of his peers, had had no basis in the war at all. The sins of a former big-game hunter, it turns out, are decidedly primal and even more vicious than the violence of man. Hawkeye never wants to see another tiger as long as he lives. “Tripped over the cat,” he mumbles in explanation for the fresh bruising, and smiles into his pillow at his private joke. 

BJ breathes out, heavy and slow. He’s beyond the cursing, the conjoling, and even point-blank demands for truth. Now, he just tries to pretend the sight of Hawkeye’s mysterious injuries doesn’t bother him at all, doesn’t make his heart go tight with worry. Hawkeye wants to pat his hand and assure him it’s all fine, really, except he’s too tired to so much as twitch. 

“What is this?” BJ asks. Not the demanding, pestering tone he usually uses in these situations. Just soft and confused, the voice of someone struggling to wrap his brain around a particularly strange occurrence.

Uh-oh.

Hawkeye pushes himself up slightly and peers over his shoulder at his feet. There, arching out from the knobby bones of his ankles, bracketing each on either side...small, feathered wings. Hawkeye makes a quiet sound of despair. He’s not upset that he’s been found out, but at the state of the usually hidden limbs. The primary feathers are all bent up, most of the barbs rubbed away. One of the wings lies entirely crooked, and some of the additional pain felt on this most recent trip now makes sense. There are broken bones in that mess, somewhere. He’s a first rate doctor, to be sure, but he hasn’t a clue how to tend to hollow bones and feathers, even if they are his own. He wonders if he can somehow enlist Radar’s help without giving away his secret.

His secret. He looks at BJ. BJ looks back. His beans have already been spilled. _Cat out of the bag, you mean_ , he jokes at himself, with a mental snicker that is utterly inappropriate, considering.

“Hawk, I think you really owe me that talk, this time,” BJ says.

Hawkeye looks at this man, his best friend, his comrade in scalpels. A mortal man full of tricks and schemes and compassion--one of _his_. 

“All right,” Hawkeye sighs, sitting up properly with some serious effort. “But promise me you’ll respect me in the morning?”

BJ smiles despite himself. “That depends on how you gently you treat me tonight.”

Hawkeye pulls at the wings, stretching them out. He wraps them back close against the flesh of his bruised ankles and gamely pulls his socks up over the top of the whole mess. It hurts like hell, but looks all right, save for some strange lumpiness. 

“Is that going to work?” BJ asks. He’s being remarkably calm. Korea has desensitized him, perhaps--or maybe that’s just his long exposure to Hawkeye himself. 

“Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t actually looked at my wings in a long time. I don’t really remember what to _do_ with them. I used to have sandals. Maybe I can get new sandals? No, of course not. I can’t be bare-toed in the OR, again. That’s a health hazard waiting to happen, eventually.” Hawkeye knows he’s rambling. He’s nervous. He looks at BJ. “I don’t know where to--where do I start?”

“I’ve heard the beginning works well for most people.”

“That’d be a very long story,” Hawkeye replies, genuinely. “Can I start a couple years ago?”

“With Korea? Sure, why not. Seems like most things started here, doesn’t it?”

Hawkeye smiles. “How panicked are you, really?”

BJ runs a hand through his hair and rubs his fingers down into the nape of his neck. “On a scale from one to ten? About a hundred.”

“Understandable.”

BJ squints at him, accessing. “You really up for this?”

Hawkeye sighs. People all around camp have been asking him variations on that theme for weeks, ever since the chopper pad incident. It’s a fair question--he knows he looks like shit most days, recovering only to suddenly relapse in what--to them--are weird, unexplained ways--but the question is irritating for the repetition. He just wants to be honest with someone, for once. It would be so much easier if he could tell the truth.

Here’s his chance, finally. And he doesn’t know what to say.

BJ hands him a drink from the still. Hawkeye takes it, but he doesn’t imbibe. He needs a clear(ish) head for this. He sighs and puts the full martini glass aside, shaking his head. “Nevermind the beginning. Linear time is a useless mortal construct, anyway. Let me start with today. Or, or yesterday, more accurately.”

“All right,” BJ says, patiently.

Hawkeye pulls up the hem of his t-shirt, baring his ribs. BJ takes in a sharp breath. “Another one?” he asks, unsurprised and unhappy. His question covers a wide range of bruises, cuts, bumps, and largely unexplained symptoms that Hawkeye has acquired over the past few months. The current ‘one’ is a set of four long, shallow gashes stretching from Hawkeye’s clavicle down to his waist. On the soldier’s pathway, the wound had been much deeper. He’s lucky to have returned with such superficial lacerations. He doesn’t want to tell BJ that, however. The idea is to tell him the truth, not put him in a panic over nothing. 

BJ sits next to him on the cot. Hawkeye can tell he wants to touch the cuts, examine them for infection, but his training keeps him from touching broken skin without sterile gloves. He gives the wounds a critical eye, instead. “If I didn’t know better,” he says, slowly. “I’d say these are claw marks.”

Hawkeye smiles at him wanly. “You really are a great doctor.”

BJ looks at him, incredulous. “What got you, Radar’s rabbit?”

“No, but I’m holding on to that one as a possible excuse. Do you think Potter would buy it?”

BJ pulls Hawkeye’s shirt back down. “Just don’t go around topless for a few days and save your breath. I’m listening, Hawk. What did this?”

“A tiger,” Hawkeye says.

BJ snorts. “And here I thought this was honesty hour. Should I come back and try again later?”

“I am being honest. It was a big, angry tiger. With sharp claws and a hunger for revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“On the dead man I was with at the time, yes.”

“Hawkeye--.”

Hawkeye takes a deep breath. “That’s not my given name.”

BJ pauses. He frowns. “I know. Your dad called you Hawkeye. Your given name is Benjamin Franklin--.”

“No. It’s not. That’s a name I cobbled together for myself, but it’s not the one that’s mine. Hawkeye isn’t, either, although I guess I’ve gotten pretty attached to it over the last couple years.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s your name, stranger?”

Hawkeye stands up. Limping slightly, he starts to pace, running his hands through his hair for lack of anything more productive to do with them. “If I tell you, you can’t go swanning off to report me to Potter. Don’t call Sidney Freedman on me, either. I’m not lying, and I’m not crazy.” He stumbles. His ankles _hurt_.

“Okay, okay! I won’t tell a soul, Hawk. Just sit down.”

Hawkeye flops back down on the cot. “Hermes. That’s my name. Or Mercury, I guess, but that actually came later. Hermes is the name my mother gave me, when I was just a child, before I tricked my way into my half-brother’s affections and talked my father into letting me into his house.”

BJ stares at him. He lifts a hand and puts it to Hawkeye’s brow, checking for fever. 

“I’m not delirious, either,” Hawkeye says, dryly. “I’m not playing a prank or telling a joke--although, I admit, it’d be a doozy if I was. I’m Hermes, god of thieves and travelers. I humble the heartless, shatter the status quo, give fortune to the luckless, and guide the dead to their rest. I am the son of my father, the highest of gods, and my mother, Maia, a nymph of the mountains. I stole cattle from my brother Apollo, guided Persephone to the home of her husband, and--to my everlasting shame--assisted in the death of Medusa, who was badly used by gods and men. I’m the messenger, the chaos-maker, the one who opens doors to new opportunities for better or worse. That’s my divine right and my sacred duty, placed upon me by the all-powerful sisters of Fate itself.” 

Hawkeye pants a little, exhausted by the monologuing. It isn’t his usual style to go on and on like that. He prefers a good back-and-forth. Hopefully, he stares at BJ in the following beat silence, waiting for his response.

BJ leans forward and pulls at Hawkeye’s dog tags, maybe a bit too roughly. “Who is this, then? Who is Hawkeye Pierce?”

Hermes--Hawkeye--blinks owlishly at the man in shock. That was not what he had expected him to say at all. “H-he’s…I don’t know. He’s not real. He’s a story I put together. It’s not difficult to forge all the papers they want. Birth certificates, medical records, degrees and professional certifications. It’s simple, if you know how or know someone who does.”

“Your dad. Daniel Pierce--?”

“He’s a man who owes me a favor. He answers the phone when people call in my name. He does live in Maine, now, but that’s not his real name and not who he really is.”

“He thought you were dead.”

Hawkeye smiles. “He’s a very capable actor and seriously committed to his method. He had to check up on his ‘son,’ sure. That’s what I pay him for. Metaphorically. Ours is not an exchange built on the standard currency. But he’s not being hard done by, Beej, I promise. He was happy to help. _Is_ happy to help for as long as Hawkeye Pierce needs connections back--back in the United States.”

BJ looks sad. Sadder than he ought to, in Hawkeye’s opinion. “So there’s no Hawkeye Pierce?”

Hawkeye shrugs, confused by the mortal man’s reaction. “No. I mean, yes. I’m him. He’s me. I am Hawkeye Pierce. I am Hermes. It’s all the same thing. Tomato, tomato.” He purposefully pronounces the name of the fruit the same both times.

“Hawkeye Pierce is my best friend,” BJ corrects. “Hermes is--is something I can’t believe, right now.”

Hawkeye nods. _That_ he had expected. “You need to time to accept it.”

“Maybe.”

Hawkeye draws up his shoulders, suddenly discomfited. “BJ, I’m the same man you’ve known. I drink the still swill, I put broken kids back together, I beg anyone who moves for sex, I go slowly out of my mind with boredom on a regular basis and I want, desperately, for all of the insanity around us to end so you can all go home. I’m Hawkeye Pierce. Nothing’s changed.”

“You say you’re a _god_. You don’t think that _changes_ things?”

Hawkeye swallows. He shouldn’t have given in, shouldn’t have told the man the truth. The truth is never the best policy. Truth causes only trouble for dishonest beings like himself. “BJ, please--.” 

BJ stands. “I need to--go somewhere else. I’ll see you later. Don’t--don’t forget to ice those feet.”

“BJ!” Hawkeye leaps up, moving to go after him. The Swamp door swings shut right in his face. Almost immediately, it opens again. Charles barrels through, utterly clueless and as smug as ever.

“Ah, Pierce. You and Hunnicutt had a spat, did you? Well, marvelous. I was hoping for a bit of peace and quiet this afternoon in which to record a message to my sister. I thank you for the opportunity.”

Hawkeye bristles, his fists clenching at his sides. He’s not a violent man. It’s not his way--but, gods, he’d love to unhinge Charles’s jaw from his big, smirking mouth. Hawkeye slowly lets out a breath.

“I’m on post-op duty tonight,” he mutters. “If Beej comes back, tell him to wait up for me, all right? We need to finish our talk.”

“What am I, the Swamp’s message bearer?”

Hawkeye sighs. “No. No, you’re right. That’s actually my job, too, I guess.”

“Pierce,” Charles says just before Hawkeye stomps out the door. 

“What?” Hawkeye snaps.

Charles opens and closes his mouth, clearly reevaluating what he’d been about to say. “Just do try to keep your bickering down to a reasonable level, will you? I need to sleep.”

“Sure, Chuck,” Hawkeye replies, just to see the other man flinch in disgust. “We’ll keep the shouting to a whisper.”

\--

Wounded arrive during Hawkeye’s post-op shift. It’s just two coming in on a chopper, but the unspoken rule of the 4077th is that new wounded--whatever their number--take precedence over the current recovering.

Hawkeye leaves his patients in the capable hands of a nurse and follows BJ and Margaret up to the landing pad. He goes for one side of the whirling machine while the other two race toward the opposite, moving nearly as one. 

What--who--he sees makes Hawkeye’s heart skip a beat. The patient is a young Korean girl, barely six years old, maybe seven. And just looking at her, Hawkeye knows that in minutes she’s going to die. It’s not easy for him to admit it. He hates to give up before he’s even tried. They describe him around camp as “quixotic” for a reason. But this? He can do nothing. He eases the plastic covering off the pallet and refuses the stretcher Klinger brings. “She doesn’t need it. Get the other guy on the Jeep and into the OR. I’ll be right there.”

“Doc?” Klinger questions. His dark eyes dart to the bloodied young girl being pulled into Hawkeye’s arms, to Hawkeye’s face, and back again.

“She doesn’t need to be rushed,” is all Hawkeye says. Klinger’s jaw tightens reflexively. He’s quick on the uptake when he wants to be and a damn good man, besides. Hawkeye needs to repay him, some day, for this moment and so many more.

“Okay. See you. Uh...just...good luck.” And Klinger races off to go where he can actually be of help. 

Hawkeye carries the girl away from the bluster and noise of the lifting chopper and the scrambling doctors. He sits down on the gentle curve of a grassy hill. The view looks out over the MASH, but that’s all right. She isn’t seeing much of anything, now, anyway.

He speaks to her in English, because he only knows that and some French and a lot of outdated Greek. With the dead, it doesn’t matter. Their comprehension surpasses simple mortal language. She’ll be able to understand him very soon, though he won’t be able to hear her speak in return. He sings her a silly song, cradles her small head against his chest, watches her last faltering breaths.

It only takes a few minutes, as he’d expected. Her breathing becomes labored, her weakened heart giving in to the battle. She’s in no pain, he knows, but he holds her tighter anyway, whispers sweeter as she gasps, her body struggling reflexively, desperate for air, desperate to keep on living. Then, all of the sudden, she falls still. 

Hawkeye slowly lowers her body to to the ground. He’ll collect it when he comes back, take her to the morgue for the proper rituals and appropriate rights. Father Mulcahy will be bothered to have missed his opportunity to save her soul, but that’s all right. Her soul is in Hawkeye’s hands, now, and it’s going to be just fine.

He stands and reaches out to the ghost. Her fingers are cool and tiny in his own. 

“Hi there, princess” he says, and she looks at him with widened eyes. She probably doesn’t speak English and is unused to understanding the foreign men infesting her country. She opens her mouth to reply. Hawkeye watches her lips move soundlessly, words formed rapidly, spoken with obvious excitement. He continues to smile.

“Sorry, honey. My ears don’t work very good. I can’t hear you. It’s okay, though. We can still communicate all right. My name is Hawkeye. I’m going to take care of you. We’re going on a journey to somewhere really nice.” He keeps himself between the ghost and her body, blocking her view of it. It’s all he can do. Keep her attention, earn her trust. Protect her as he does every soul.

He rests his chin on her shoulder. She giggles and doesn’t move. He closes his eyes and listens, pulling at the thread of her fate and listening to the high, bell-like chord it sounds. An orphan. Her father away at war, her mother a victim of fever. She had found survival so far in scavenging, pulling up bits of scrap and selling it to hard-eyed men in familiar olive green. This is the only life she has known--hunger, pain, disquiet. The gunfire that killed her was of the friendly-fire variety. She saw the face of the American man who did it, the way his eyes went wide with horror at what he’d done. The way he turned and ran away from her, leaving her behind. 

Hawkeye pulls back. Gently, he brushes hair from her eyes. “It’s been a rough one, hasn’t it?” he asks, expecting and getting no answer. “It’s all right. It’s about to get a lot better.”

The light appears with a soft breeze. Hawkeye points to it. The girl exclaims something unheard, clapping her hands in equal silence. Hawkeye grins. It’s been a while since any of his charges responded so favorably to the preternatural glow. 

“Pretty, isn’t it? We get to go in there, believe it or not.”

The girl turns to him, chattering. He waits for her lips to stop moving out of politeness. 

“It’s an adventure, you’ll see.” He kneels down before her. “Now, listen, honey. It might get scary. There might be monsters or spooky sounds. But you don’t have to worry, all right? I know how to handle monsters, and I’ll keep you good and safe. Ok?”

She looks from him to the light and back. She says something and presses her small hands to his cheeks, squishing them in. Hawkeye laughs, the sound inhibited by her tiny palms and the way they make his lips purse like a fish. “Is that a ‘yes’?” he asks, muffled.

She grins at him and leans forward, kissing his nose. She points at the light, tugging at his hand. She’s ready to go, monsters be damned. Hawkeye wishes more of the dead in his care would show such easy trust. He hopes he earns it. 

He allows himself to be pulled through the light, shivering a bit at the icy tingle it provides. They pause just past the threshold of the glow, surveying the path before them. It’s shorter than most that Hawkeye has recently traveled, just a few miles long at most. There are beautiful flowers growing on either side of the road. The path itself at first seems inset with tiny stones but Hawkeye, upon closer inspection, finds them to be billions of unpolished pearls. He gets to his feet and smiles, basking in a sudden cool breeze. The sky above is robin’s egg blue, not a cloud in sight. He looks down at the girl. “It’s nice, right?”

She nods, beaming. She tugs at him again, and they start to walk, a slow and steady amble that is blissfully easy on Hawkeye’s still-aching ankles. 

They have traveled several meters when Hawkeye notices it--subtle motion from the corner of his eye. There is something moving parallel to them, hidden by the tall grass and blooming wildflowers. Gently, Hawkeye tugs back on the girl’s hand, encouraging her to keep her steps closer to Hawkeye’s own. 

By the time the dark form attacks, Hawkeye is more than prepared. He whips the girl around to stand behind him and lifts his arms in an ‘x’ shape, forming a makeshift shield. The stalking figure is a massive snake, wider than Hawkeye and so long that he can only guess at where the lithe form ends. Not that he is overly concerned with the tail--his current focus is taken up by the head or, more accurately, the fangs. Hawkeye howls as two dagger-like teeth sink into the flesh of his arm. “Go!” he yells at the girl. “Run ahead! Go on!”

He can’t be sure there aren’t more shadows--more worries and fears and failings--waiting for the girl. At least if she’s in motion she stands a chance. 

“She’s just a child!” Hawkeye yells at the snake, twisting his body and pulling the head of the giant animal with him. “Whatever you are, she doesn’t deserve you! She’s just a scared little girl whom big, stupid men put in the path of danger with their useless war! She’s not bad! She’s not cruel! She’s not selfish! She just--she just misses her _mother_!”

He gives a hard push. The snake loosens its jaws, slips back and away. His arm is wet with blood. He feels--something is--. He shakes his head, pushes the encroaching dizziness aside. The snake turns its head, locks gazes with him. “She did what she had to do to live. There’s no crime in that. Adults make those same tough decisions every day and don’t pick their choices half so well. She had the right to live as best she could. She did her best. Best is best. It’s-it’s okay.”

The snake lowers its head, whole form swaying slightly back and forth, a gesture that Hawkeye reads as shame. Hawkeye reaches out to it, runs his shaking hands over its scales. It had looked pure black in color when first he saw it spring out from the ditch. Now, he can see the iridescent shimmer trapped in the hard plates, the suggestion of beautiful, rainbow light. “That’s it,” he soothes. “That’s it. You’re a good girl, honey. A brave, strong girl. Your mom would be so proud. She’s--she’ll be so happy to see you.” Hawkeye falls to his knees, head swimming. The snake goes with him, softening his dissent. 

For such a cold-blooded creature, it feels very warm beneath him. 

The ghost touches his elbow, startling him into opening his eyes. She hasn’t run away. She stayed near him the whole time. Everything is blurry to Hawkeye’s eyes, like a wet watercolor painting, all the colors oozing together. The girl looks worried, brows drawn in, lips pursed tight. She grips his sleeve in her hands and tugs at it a few times, saying something silent but urgent. “Hey,” he says, forcing a grin at her. “Hey, you’re going to-to wrinkle the coat. Not that I particularly mind, mind you, but Uncle Sam is so picky about these things.”

He looks down. The creature he rests against looks right back at him. Its eyes are a warm, glistening amber. The scales he’d taken first for black and then for dark with a rainbow sheen are now decidedly a bright yellow-gold. Hawkeye has vague ideas of what yellow means for the people of Korea and their culture. The center. Knowledge. Protection from the things that lurk in the dark. 

Symbolism is important, when walking the paths of the dead. Whatever this spectre was before, its intentions have been changed. Hawkeye is only vaguely surprised when the serpentine creature lifts its head--lifting him bodily with it--and pushes Hawkeye gently back onto his feet. The snake’s whole shape is different now. Its snout is longer, ending in delicate tendrils on either side, like the mustache of a catfish. It has soft fur growing from its jaws and down its sharp chin. A long, forked tongue flickers out, tasting the air. Instead of two piercing fangs, the gesture shows rows of sharp, predatory teeth. Hawkeye is a mythical creature himself. He knows a dragon when he sees one, even if it looks a little different than the species he remembers from back home.

“Uh, hello there,” Hawkeye greets it. “I like the new look very much, and not just because you’ve stopped trying to eat me.” 

The dragon purrs, preening a bit. The little ghost girl laughs silently, reaching up to it. Gently, the dragon grabs the back of her tunic in its lips and tosses her up onto its broad, sinewy back. Hawkeye nods. “Very kind, thanks--although, of the two of us, I think she was getting along just fine without help.” 

He starts to walk again. The dragon slithers at his side, moving slowly out of deference for the dragging pace that Hawkeye, by necessity of his own weakness, sets. 

Hawkeye puts a hand against the dragon’s side and uses it to subtly keep himself on his feet. He hopes that they will see no other spectres of the girl’s conscience on what remains of their walk. He will do whatever it takes to get her to her light, of course, but he’s not so sure of his own chances of winning another squirmish. 

They travel, slow step by slow step, toward the bright, white glow. Nothing troubles them again. Perhaps whatever shadows remain and lurk are scared away by their new dragon friend. The beast stops a few feet short of the threshold of the ghost girl’s paradise. The girl giggles soundlessly as she swoops off its back as if it is a slide and glides right into Hawkeye’s waiting arms. She’s very heavy to him, now, and he worries about soiling her with his blood, but he holds her to him all the same. He indicates the glowing portal with his chin. “There it is. The last place you’ll ever need to go. Mommy is there and Daddy, too, and all the people you loved who left you. Beyond that, I don’t know what you’ll find. But whatever it is, I bet it’s good and warm and you’ll like it a lot.” Hawkeye slowly eases her down to her feet. “Be brave.”

The girl takes his hand and squeezes his larger fingers in hers. She grins up at him. Says something that he really, truly wishes he could hear, could understand. Then she lets go of him and turns away toward the waiting light. She peers into it, a little suspicious. Then an expression of delight washes over her serious features, and she cries out something over and over, running forward. The light embraces her and glows too bright to look at any longer. 

Hawkeye has just enough time to turn and see the dragon nod its massive head to him before the path around him disappears and he comes back to himself, sitting on the small and grassy hill with a cold little body lying at his side. 

He puts his hands against the ground to push himself up and regrets it. He hisses, drawing his arms in toward his chest. Hardly daring to assess the damage, he pulls one arm straight and pushes up the sleeve of his jacket. Dark bruises in his forearm, ugly and deep. He stands up and teeters a moment, vaguely dizzy, his stomach giving a lurch. He closes his eyes and, after a few moments, the sensation passes. Carefully, he turns to the girl’s body and picks it up. He doesn’t put a lot of stock in the sanctity of corpses, personally, but it will put the minds of many at rest if he brings it to the MASH’s morgue. 

BJ waits for him as he approaches, his expression somber and dark. Hawkeye knows he’s thinking about his own little girl back home. He doesn’t blame BJ for those associations. He understands all too well. 

Hawkeye approaches his best friend on unsteady feet and holds the body out between them, a peace offering of the most morbid sort. “Can you--I can’t.” BJ, bless him, is quick to reach forward and relieve Hawkeye of his burden. Hawkeye’s numb arms fall at his sides and he closes his eyes, nearly falling with them. 

BJ calls out to Klinger, who appears with the sort of speed that indicates the man has been eavesdropping nearby. “Help Hawkeye,” BJ says, curtly, and disappears through the white curtains with the body. Hawkeye relaxes. BJ will make sure that everything is taken care of. He can rest, now.

Klinger, resplendent in a bright purple silk number, gamely loops his long, hairy arm around Hawkeye’s back. Hawkeye sinks against him, his head lolling forward. His tongue feels thick. “Geez, when’d you have time to get a drink?” Klinger asks, disapproving and confused in turn. Hawkeye shows his teeth at the man. 

“I’m not drunk,” he protests. “I just need to sit down.”

Klinger and he shuffle over to the waiting bench against the OR wall. Hawkeye falls into it with a thud and lets his head crash back against the flimsy wood panelling behind him. He wants to close his eyes for a second. A nagging thought keeps him conscious. “The guy. The other wounded, Klinger. He okay?”

“Yeah, sir,” Klinger says. “Winchester’s working on him now. Just a shoulder wound, sounds like. I’m waiting around here to wheel him to post-op.”

“Good, great,” Hawkeye breathes, “that’s great.” The world tilts, even with his eyes closed. He feels like he’s going to throw up.

“You don’t look so hot,” Klinger says, stating the obvious. “Maybe I should go get--.”

“It’s okay, Klinger. I’ve got him. Go back into OR and check on Charles, wouldja?”

“Sure, Doc,” Klinger drawls, knowingly, “Or how about you give me a quarter, and I’ll go to the movies?”

BJ gives Klinger a friendly little push toward the OR doors. “‘Bye, Klinger.”

“Aye, aye, my Captain!” Klinger snarks back, but he does as bidden. 

BJ sits down next to Hawkeye. Hawkeye doesn’t see him--he doesn’t want to risk opening his eyes, yet--but he can feel the warmth of BJ’s body, and the smell of his aftershave is more than familiar, now. BJ leans toward him and picks up one of Hawkeye’s arms from where they rest, limp, on either side of his knees. BJ pushes up the jacket sleeve and hisses softly under his breath. “What was it this time?”

“Snake,” Hawkeye mumbles. “Was a snake. Dragon, now.”

“Hm. Venomous?”

“Mmhm.”

BJ pulls at Hawkeye’s eyelids, turning his head up to the light. Hawkeye whines. “Hey! Warn a guy.”

“You knew this was coming. Just shut up and let me look at you.” BJ pokes and prods. “Are you dizzy? Nauseated?”

“I was before. It’s gone, now.”

“You’re not clammy. Your pupils are dilating properly.” BJ pinches the flesh of his cheek. “Skin is elastic. I think you’re fine.”

Hawkeye nods. He’ll take that and gladly. He’s tired and his arms ache, but it’s believable that he left the full effects of the venom along the path. As far as journeys go, the little girl’s hadn’t really been so bad; her’s wasn’t the type of trauma to linger. “I need a nap,” Hawkeye declares. BJ loops an arm around his shoulders and helps push/pull him to his feet.

“You need a tour guide?” BJ asks, tone too casual to believe.

“Nah. I’m like Potter’s horse. I can find my padlock in my sleep, by now.”

“All right. Just watch your step. I’ll come check on you after I’ve done my round in post-op.”

Hawkeye nods, offering his friend an uncoordinated wave. He doesn’t much look forward to being roused out of sleep for another damn physical, but if it’ll put BJ’s mind at ease and get the man talking to him again, he’ll take the intrusion and a hundred others like it without a word.

\--

“Why are you _here_ of all places? You could be anywhere. Doing anything.”

Hawkeye swirls the liquid in his martini glass and watches the ancient olive be sucked under in the resulting whirlpool. “That’s exactly what I did. From the late 1500s to the Industrial Age, I went everywhere and I did everything. You know what I learned?”

“What?”

“Eternity is boring without a purpose. So, I decided to try my hand at contributing to the larger society. I tried a lot of things. Medicine was just the one that stuck. I tell you, Beej, the first time I sat in on an anatomy demonstration at the Royal College--that’s when I _knew_. I already understood how human bodies worked, more or less. Caviderical dissection got a good start in Greece, you know. Around the second, third year B.C. Cutting people up was frowned on, in most circles. But you know how humans are, especially doctors. They just couldn’t resist. It definitely happened, bodies being pulled away from funeral rites, laid out in shady laboratories and opened up like books. Still, I never personally saw a dissected body until that day in autumn, hiding in the back row of a lecture hall in Britain and standing on my tip-toes to get the best view I could.”

BJ considers this in silence for a while. “All right. So, you took up medicine because you were curious and the anatomy intrigued you. I’ll buy it; lots of doctors have stories like that. By why are you _here_ , now? According to you, you’re not even a real person, let alone a real American. It’s not like you’re subject to the draft.”

Hawkeye refills his drink. He feels the need to be well lubricated for what remains of this interrogation. “‘Here’ seemed like the logical step, after.”

“After what?”

“After World War II.”

“What were you doing _there_?”

“Medic work, mostly.”

“But _why_?”

Hawkeye sighs, digging his fingers into the sockets of his eyes. “I don’t know, BJ. You might as well ask Colonel Potter the same damn question. Because they needed doctors. I was a doctor. And I had so much experience.”

“Experience? Even more than World War II?”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye says, tonelessly. “You know, in the war before the sequel. The One to End Them All.”

“Jesus, Hawk. You really expect me to swallow this?”

Hawkeye examines the glass in BJ’s hand in an exaggerated manner. “You’re right, it does look a bit grimy. Maybe toss it out and try again. Wipe the glass off with your shirt; it’s pretty clean, today.” 

“Don’t joke! Not-not right now. Look, Hawkeye, I know I promised to keep this under my hat, but--.”

“You think I’m nuts.”

“I _know_ you’re nuts.” To BJ’s credit, he sounds very distressed about it. 

Hawkeye rolls his eyes. He pulls off his sock and sticks his bare toes in BJ’s face, giving them a wiggle. His wings flop, pathetic and losing precious feathers, with the motion. “So tell me, Doubting Thomas, what are these?”

“Birth defect. Sudden onset bone disorder. I don’t know!”

“Hey, I resent that. I know they aren’t in the best of shape right now, but I happen to be fond of these little babies. ‘Bone disorder.’ I’m wounded.”

“Yeah, in the head.”

“Beej, what do I have to do to convince you? I’m Hermes, god of--.”

“Thieves, travellers, yadda yadda. I know the party line by now, Hawk. I just don’t-- _can’t_ \--believe it.”

Hawkeye lowers his foot. His limp feathers drag over the dirty floor as he stands and starts to pace. “You’re my best friend, BJ. The best one I’ve ever had, maybe, which is saying something. I just told you the biggest secret I’ve got. I’ve never told anybody before. Not _anybody_.”

BJ frowns slightly. “Not even Trapper?” he hazards, a bit of that old flash of jealousy sneaking in.

Hawkeye smiles. Bingo. “Are you kidding? _He’d_ have never believed me. But _you--._ ”

BJ is too smart for this double-talk. He throws Hawkeye a dry, knowing look. In the end, though, he simply sighs, taking a big gulp from his glass and filling it right back up again.

“Okay. Tell me more about what you’re doing with the dead.”

“Are you sure? It might ruin the mystery for you.”

BJ grimaces and swallows another belt. At this rate, he’s going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow. “Just tell me how it all works.”

And Hawkeye does.

\--

Maybe it’s Radar’s radar that brings him to Hawkeye’s hiding place. Maybe it’s just fate, pulling at strings, as usual. 

“Uh, Hawkeye? Do you know you’re sitting in the dark?”

Hawkeye squints in the sunlight as it streams through the open door of the Officer’s Club. It’s mid-afternoon and the club is empty. People always go to Rosie’s if they want to unwind during the day. That’s what makes the OC such a prime spot for hiding, usually. That’s why Hawkeye is here.

“Go away, Radar,” he says, dully. He pulls a fresh bottle of scotch from the bar and pours himself another drink. He digs into his pockets and tosses a few more bits of script onto the already giant pile. Typically, he deals in IOUs. Today, he feels generous. Maybe if he pays his small, insignificant debts, his larger, cosmic ones will follow. 

Radar skitters into the room. “Ah, I’d like to. But I can’t. Everybody’s real worried about you, Hawkeye.”

Twenty-eight hours ago, Hawkeye lost a patient on the table. Not his fault. The kid threw a clot. Brain death. It happens. He knows all of this. He’s not shaken by abrupt death, anymore. It’s a part of the job that he’s come--at least intellectually--to accept. It’s what came after (or rather, what didn’t) that has him spooked. The man had left no ghost.

Hawkeye had looked high and low, thinking perhaps that in the chaos of the man’s demise, Shis spirit had simply wandered away unnoticed. Within the first few hours, however, Hawkeye had been forced to acknowledge the truth. There was no ghost to find.

Hawkeye squints at the watch on Radar’s wrist. He’s been drinking for a long time. It’s not enough. 

“Radar,” Hawkeye slurs. “Do you know what happens to you, when you die?”

Radar’s expression goes pained. He obviously doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be faced with these questions. “Aw, gee, Hawkeye, maybe I oughta go get BJ. Or Father Mulcahy.”

Hawkeye shakes his head. “No, no. We don’t need them. I know the answer already. I’m asking if _you_ know.”

Radar sits next to Hawkeye at the bar. He clenches his fingers together, tight, and then traps his clasped hands between his knees. The defensive, awkward posture makes him look more like a kid than ever. He’s so stupidly young. Not the youngest face Hawkeye has ever seen in a warzone, but young enough that sometimes it hurts to look him eye to eye and know that his days, like the days of all mortal men, are numbered. “No, sir,” Radar sighs.

“Radar,” Hawkeye replies, pained. “Don’t--don’t _sir_ me.” Radar only calls Hawkeye ‘sir’ when he’s upset with him, these days. Hawkeye can’t take Radar’s disappointment in addition to his own confused misery. 

“Sorry, Hawkeye.”

“When you die,” Hawkeye says, leaning forward, speaking softly, sharing one of the biggest secrets he knows, “you get lost.”

“Huh?”

“Your soul. Your soul, Radar. When you die, your soul leaves your body and it wanders around. You feel like you need to go _somewhere_ , but you don’t know where or when or-or why. That’s because there’s nowhere to go.”

“Uh, Hawkeye. I think that might be kinda blasphemous,” Radar says, speaking carefully, like he doesn’t want to offend his agnostic friend but also feels the need to defend his own Protestant upbringing. 

“No, no, listen. There’s nowhere to go _here_ ,” he gestures messily all around them. “Or-or up there,” Hawkeye points up “or down there,” Hawkeye points down. “There’s just here.” He makes a fist and beats it--a bit rougher than necessary--against his own chest. 

Radar stares at Hawkeye’s glass of booze as if trying to make it disappear out of his hand using only the power of his mind.

“Are you listening?”

“I’m listening, Hawkeye. Nowhere to go but in your chest.”

“No, not your--geez, Radar. Not in your chest. In-in yourself. After you die, you walk in- _inside_ of yourself, you walk _through_ yourself. And then you go into the light and on to whatever is waiting for you on the other side. Now, I don’t _know_ what’s on the other side, anymore. But it’s good. I mean, If _you_ were good, if you go in with-with grace and self-acceptance, it’s great. But what are you supposed to do if you just...if you just aren’t _there_?” Hawkeye goes to take another drink. He misses his mouth and spills half of it down his front. Radar winces.

“Hawkeye, I gotta get you back to the Swamp. The Colonel’s gonna be real glad I found you, finally. He’s gonna be mad too, I bet, but he’ll be glad, first.”

“I can’t go back to the Swamp. Aren’t you listening? There was no one there! No path, no light. Where did he go?”

Radar frowns thoughtfully. “Well, maybe he’s good at navigating. Maybe he just wasn’t lost.”

Hawkeye stares at the young man with wide, confused eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You said that when you die you get lost. So, I figure, if someone dies and they _aren’t_ lost, it’s because they knew the way already, right?”

Hawkeye’s pickled brain processes this for a while. “So, you think he’s all right?”

Radar has no idea what Hawkeye is talking about. The young man takes a deep breath and channels that sneaky, deceptive part of himself he uses when trying to convince other people’s company clerks that he’s really a General. He looks his friend in the eye and lies. “Yeah, Hawkeye. I bet he’s just fine.”

Hawkeye puts down his half-empty (half-full?) glass. “Oh. Well. Ok.”

“Hawkeye? You, uh, wanna take a nap or a shower or somethin’?”

Hawkeye yawns hugely at the mention of sleep. “Sure, okay. I guess I could do that. Are you coming with me?” His leer is too wide to be taken seriously, but it still makes Radar’s face burn a deep, beet red.

“I’ll help you get to the door.”

Hawkeye beams sloppily at him and gets to his feet, leaning heavily against the much shorter man. “What a coincidence! I do that, too!”

\--

Margaret Houlihan slams her coffee cup down with obvious glee. Hawkeye groans long and low, forcing one eye open to observe the woman’s smug expression.

“Margaret,” Hawkeye says, his voice muffled by the unforgiving, sticky surface of the mess table. “Please. Have a seat.”

She’s already sitting next to him, staring at him with eyes that are far too awake and full of cheer for this most hellish hour. “You’re hungover,” she points out, rather viciously.

Hawkeye closes his eye and offers nothing in response. She _pokes_ him. In the shoulder, with the handle end of her spoon. He opens both eyes and glares at her. “ _What_?”

“Where did you go yesterday? We all looked for you for hours.”

“Sorry to ruin your afternoon,” Hawkeye says, and he actually means it. Everyone has been working themselves to the bone, as of late. Half the camp had all wasted their free time in a manhunt, worried about him. He’s touched, though he’d rather not let on.

Margaret frowns at him, likely upset that he’s not answering her pointed questions. Slowly, with apparent effort, her expression softens. “Listen,” she says, gently, “I know you were upset about losing your patient--.”

“Oh, he’s not lost.”

Margaret blinks. She always looks faintly angry when confused. It’s one of things Hawkeye enjoys most about her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Radar and I talked about it, and I think he’s right. He knew where to go.”

“Who? Radar?”

“No! The dead man. The soldier.”

Margaret’s careful gentleness goes sharp with--what what? Anxiety? Judgement? Hawkeye isn’t familiar enough with her mercurial moods to know for certain. Whatever it is, it makes him pull himself away from the table and sit up (mostly) straight in pure self defense. 

“Pierce--,” Margaret begins, only to stop and correct herself, “Hawkeye. Are you doing all right? It’s been a difficult few days for everyone. And I know you’ve had some--some _troubles_ \--the last few months.”

Hawkeye’s confusion is only partially feigned. “‘Troubles’?” he echoes.

Margaret leans closer, drops her voice to a whisper. Hawkeye reflexively mimics the motion so that they are only inches apart. For one brief, insane moment he considers kissing her, but he pushes the impulse aside. His head hurts enough as it is; he has no desire to have Hot Lips ring his bell. 

“The fact of the matter is--I know. And since I know and you know I know, that’s all there is to it,” Margaret says. 

Hawkeye blinks slowly and tilts his head slightly, rubbing at one of his ears on the off chance that something has them clogged. “Margaret, I know you think I know what you think you know I know, but I _don’t_ know. What, I repeat, are you talking about?”

Margaret leans forward and--much to Hawkeye’s alarm--pats his hand with her own in a gesture that one could almost call compassionate. “I don’t know exactly how long you’ve been at it, or even how you’re doing it--but surely you agree that this camp can’t afford to have a Chief Surgeon who’s going around, well, you know...causing himself damage. Don’t you? Agree, I mean?”

Hawkeye’s entire world gives a sickening lurch that rivals even the stomach-churning effects of his massive hangover. “Self-inflicted,” he says, hollowly. “You think all the injuries I’ve gotten--that I’ve been doing it to myself.”

Margaret clears her throat awkwardly. “That’s no shame in it,” she says, and Hawkeye _knows_ how much it costs her to say such a thing. Margaret Houlihan, acknowledging that what he’s allegedly going through is not just a weakness of character. Remarkable, really, how humans can change. “But I really do feel that it’s time something be done about it. And that’s why I’d--I’d like you to talk to Potter about what’s going on with you. And if you don’t go of your own free will, I’ll report you, Hawkeye. I’ll have to.”

Hawkeye looks at her in astonishment for a long beat. “You’re worried about me,” he says, in awe.

Margaret frowns. Apparently she had expected a different reaction. “Well of course I’m worried about you. What kind of friend would I be if I wasn’t?”

The big, bright smile Hawkeye gives her makes his face muscles hurt. “I didn’t know we were on a friendly basis these days, Margaret. I wish you’d told me before, I’d have gotten us a bottle of something bubbly to celebrate.”

Margaret rolls her eyes at him. “Pierce, don’t be disgusting. And don’t--do that thing you do. I’m being serious. I want you to get help.”

Hawkeye gives into impulse. He puts a palm to the back of her head and pulls her to him, kissing her forehead hard. “Sure, Margaret,” he promises, standing up from the table and picking up his still-full tray to go dump its contents. “I’ll go talk to Potter right now.”

He leaves her sitting there, wide-eyed and stunned, her mouth moving in silent protest (or, perhaps, approval). 

\--

He talks to Potter about baseball for a few minutes. And pizza toppings. And gardening. And what it’s like to catch your own lobster and throw it into a pot. He rambles on about everything and nothing until, confused and exasperated, his CO orders him to get the hell out. 

“You bet,” Hawkeye says agreeably on his way out the door. “Oh, and, Colonel--we don’t need to have another heart-to-heart any time soon, do we?”

Potter’s emphatic “No!” is music to Hawkeye’s ears. When Margaret asks the older man later if he’s talked to Hawkeye recently, she’s sure to get quite the answer in response, though probably not the one she wants. 

\--

His wings won’t go back in. He’s kept them under wraps--literally under gauze--for weeks, waiting for the magic that had previously hidden them to take over, for the incriminating bits of feather and flesh to disappear from the physical plane again. Nothing doing. At this rate, he’ll be wearing his socks in the showers for the rest of the war. 

Huddled alone together in the supply tent late at night, BJ and Hawkeye wear similar frowns as they stare at Hawkeye’s feet. The most recent bruises have healed up nicely, nothing but splotches of yellow-green left to mark their existence. The wings still look a sight, made even more crumpled by Hawkeye’s insistence on keeping them wrapped up and covered at all times. BJ gently pinches the tip of one with his gloved fingers and pulls the hinged limb out as straight as it will go. Hawkeye grimaces but doesn’t kick up a fuss. 

“You’re sure we can’t just remove them? I’m no expert in, uh, nonstandard appendages, but I do know about legs. it seems pretty straightforward.” They’d taken proper x-rays of Hawkeye’s ankles the night before. The x-rays are nothing more than ash, now, but the brief time they’d been able to spend studying the images in private had been useful. BJ is right. Technically, it shouldn’t be too difficult to remove the wings from where they meet, jointed up against the unusual hollows in the bones of Hawkeye’s fibula and talus. The musculature would be a concern, but there’s no reason the tendons couldn’t be severed without long term effects to his range of motion. 

It’s not the technical aspect of removal that concerns Hawkeye. He shakes his head. “Not an option. I need my wings to walk the paths. The ghosts don’t need any extra help to stay grounded--they’re dead. But I’m _not_ dead. These little beauties are like...like treads in a tire. They induce metaphysical friction and allow me to keep my footing. And they make me fast.” He grins. It’s been a long, long time since he’s gone for a joy ride of any kind, but he can still remember the pure, heady rush of the experience of self-sustained flight. 

BJ sighs. They’ve talked around this circle before, and they keep coming up against the same damn wall. “You could just stop going on the paths.”

“You know I can’t do that, and you know why.”

BJ, intellectually, does understand. He believes Hawkeye’s story, now, really and truly. The conflict isn’t in the man’s head. It’s his heart. It causes him pain, the way Hawkeye keeps coming back, aching and exhausted at best, wounded and wound tight with anxiety at worst. BJ, Hawkeye knows, is also starting to bend under the weight of their shared lies. These aren’t the sort of casual fibs that come hand in hand with childish pranking. It’s serious, complicated deception. These pointed lies they tell their peers carry too much potential for disaster if discovered--that’s not the kind of untruth at which BJ excels. 

It’s too late to take it all back. BJ knows, now, and he can’t--won’t--let Hawkeye perform his duty alone.

“Then as far as I see it, our first priority is to treat this break.” BJ runs a gentle finger tip against the unnatural curve in one of Hawkeye’s wings. In the x-ray, the hollow bone had been reduced to nothing but grinding splinters. “And our next priority is your day-to-day comfort. You can’t just keep stuffing them into your boots.”

“What should I do, then--let it all hang out? Father Mulcahy will be scandalized. Not to mention Charles.”

BJ smiles. “You could on a limited basis. We all know Charles’s schedule. Any time he’s out of the Swamp, you should take the opportunity to stretch. Otherwise, there’s plenty of places to go if you need some alone time.” BJ indicates the very tent in which they are standing.

Hawkeye smirks. “There are so many, better ways to make use of alone time. _And_ this space.”

BJ rolls his eyes. “Well, you can do some of that, too, if you want. I’m not your priest.” He pauses, serious again. He pulls the other three wings out to their full span. Even the muscles of the healthiest ones are too tight, atrophied from lack of continuous use in this, the physical plane. “You have to do something, Hawk.”

“I know, I know. I’ll set up my very own physical therapy routine. Sixteen flaps a repetition, five reps an hour.”

BJ doesn’t seem to find that funny. “What did you say they’re like when you’re--uh--traveling? Do they look any healthier?”

Hawkeye shrugs. “I don’t really notice them in there. I’ve got other things to worry about.”

“Well, next time, make a point of doing an inspection, huh? That’s useful data.”

“If you say so.”

“As your doctor, I do.”

Hawkeye waves him off. 

“Can you move them? Not like you always do, I mean, with your hands--like they’re dead weight. If they’re wings, they should be capable of independent motion, right?” 

Hawkeye makes a face. He hasn’t tried that in a decades, since long before Korea. “Must we?”

“ _All_ the data is important, Hawkeye. What kind of scientist are you?”

“The surgeon kind. The only hypothesis I ever need to prove is whether or not the kid on my table is going to live because me or die because of me.”

BJ frowns. It makes his mustache all droopy. “You can’t blame yourself for--.”

“That’s not the conversation we’re having right now.”

BJ sighs, letting it go. He points at Hawkeye’s toes. “Go on. I want to see.”

Hawkeye hugs his knees and puts his chin between them, peering down at his feet, soles planted flat on the cot he sits on. He tilts his head slightly. He remembers the mechanics of it, dimly. The sensation of movement, a soft, pleasant hum around his ankles. He thinks about how his wings are constructed, one hollow bone settled neatly against the next, the tendons and muscles stretching artfully between them. He thinks ‘flight,’ and his wings twitch. 

Slowly, on their own, the little wings lift and stretch slightly, impeded as they are by bent feathers and broken bones. Hawkeye grimaces in pain, but he doesn’t let up. He flips the wings a few times, creating a tiny breeze.

“Ow, hell,” Hawkeye hisses, and all motion stops.

“Too much,” BJ agrees, in sympathy. “That was great though, Hawk. Really amazing.”

Hawkeye offers him a wry smile. “You should have seen me back in the day, Beej. Sure, the toga look was never great for me--I don’t have the legs for it--but with my sandals and my helmet and my staff? I was a sight to behold. Every god and goddess said my name with anticipation and joy--because I brought the mail, mostly, but even then--I really _earned_ my place in Olympus, you know, even if I did spin some fish tales to get the initial invitation.”

“I’m sure.”

BJ has that look again, discomfited. He believes Hawkeye is who he says he is and can do what he says he does, but talking about it in detail makes the man fidget. Hawkeye often uses these opportunities of disquiet to remind his friend that, despite everything, he’s more than human enough. 

“Hey, what’s that on your shirt?” Hawkeye asks.

BJ looks down. “Where?”

Hawkeye leans forward and flicks BJ’s nose. “Oh, my mistake,” he says, laughing as BJ stumbles back in surprise.

“God, Hawkeye, what are you, twelve?”

“Give or take several hundred years, sure. Stop moping and help me cinch up again, huh? I’ve got a date in an hour.”

“A date? How do you--?”

“Gently and with finesse,” Hawkeye purrs. “You want me to show you sometime?”

BJ snorts and ignores him, as he always does when Hawkeye flirts in his direction. “Your feet, Hawkeye. How do you explain it?”

“Same way I explain all of it. The odd-shaped bruises, the random burns, the lacerations.”

“And how’s that?”

“Gently. And. With. Finesse.” Hawkeye grins wide. BJ smacks him over the back of the head with an open palm.

“Fine, fine. Just don’t blow your cover because you can’t keep your ‘finesse’ in your pants, all right?”

Hawkeye accepts a long piece of fresh gauze as it is handed to him and starts to wrap it around his folded wings. He has to hold it tight to cut down on the lumpiness but not so tight as to cut off vital circulation. He’s glad he’s a doctor in moments like these. 

“BJ Hunnicutt, you sound jealous.”

“Of course I’m jealous. You’ve got a beautiful, willing woman waiting for you across camp. Meanwhile, my beautiful, willing wife is thousands of miles and a day away.”

Hawkeye had meant to flirt and tease, not make the man homesick and sad. He pulls his socks and shoes on and hops gingerly off his cot. “We can swap just this once, if you’d like. You take the nurse, I’ll write to your wife. I just hope you’ve got a good explanation for that mustache. And I hope Peg likes dirty limericks.”

BJ laughs. His reply is interrupted by the supply tent door crashing open. 

“There you are, sirs! I’ve been looking everywhere for you, you know! Hawkeye, that patient of yours with the head wound’s gotten real bad. Potter wants you in the OR right now.” Radar looks like he might explode at any moment. 

Hawkeye nods, “All right, all right. I’m right behind you. Beej, stop by the nurse’s tent and tell Able I’m sorry from me, will you? Last time I skipped a date with a nurse without warning, the whole pack of them tore into me like wolves.”

“Will do.”

“Give her a kiss for me, too! But only use your bottom lip!” Hawkeye shouts behind his shoulder as he runs out of the tent.

He races past Radar into the prep room, working his way through a wash and slithering into his gear in record time. The man on the table looks ghastly, white as the sheets lying over him, moaning low and soft. “What’ve we got?”

“Brain bleed,” Potter says, right to the point. “Gotta take off the pressure.”

Hawkeye is not proficient in brain work. In his defense, no one on camp really is. Human brains are strange organs. Tricky, to say the least. He nods, glancing over at Margaret, who is attending.

“Prep him here. Shave and sterilization. I need to drill.”

“Yes, doctor.”

Hawkeye looks at the young man’s tense, clammy face. “Don’t worry, soldier. Either way, I’m taking good care of you tonight.”

\--

The wounded man lives. For how much longer is uncertain, but he leaves the OR breathing and alive with a tiny new hole in his skull.

Hawkeye yawns and tries to resist the urge to look at the clock again. It’s very late. That’s all he needs to know. He twists on the uncomfortable stool, breathing out in relief as his spine pops. He really needs to work on his posture; his back is killing him. On the bed beside him, the soldier with the head injury continues to breathe. 

Hawkeye doesn’t want to see the inside of this man’s soul. He doesn’t want to hear the simple song of his tapestry or face his inner demons or watch, utterly forgotten, as he peers into his own personal paradise and steps through without so much as a goodbye. He doesn’t want to do it. And he’s not going to have to, because, gods help him, this man is going to _live_.

His chin drops to his chest. He closes his eyes. Just for a minute. He just needs a minute.

When he wakes, there is a ghost sitting on the edge of the soldier’s cot, looking on at him with patient eyes.

Hawkeye jerks, lurching forward to the body, reaching out to its neck and--cold. Ice cold. He must have died hours before, silent and unnoticed. It happens, sometimes, especially with these sort of massive injuries. The boys just...go. Hawkeye sighs, rubbing his eyes with his thumbs until he sees spots of dancing light. There’s nothing to be done but what is required of him.

“Baker,” he says, softly, drawing the attention of the on-duty nurse. “This one’s gone. Can you handle the morgue procedures?”

Only the barest shadow of emotion crosses her face. She nods, all professionalism. “Of course, doctor.”

“Thanks. I’m gonna head out.” He isn’t on duty, now. He has the time to spare. He waits until Susan leaves the room--probably to go collect Klinger to help her move the body--and turns to the dead man. The ghost’s head is a mess. He bleeds.

Hawkeye shakes his head, reaching out and brushing his fingertips over the memory of the man’s gaping, mortal wounds. “Those aren’t yours, anymore,” he says, gently. “You don’t have to carry them with you.”

The ghost frowns in some confusion and then concentration. Slowly, the illusion of his wounds disappears, leaving whole, clean flesh behind. Hawkeye smiles at him, if a bit tightly. “Much better. You look like a million bucks. Or a couple dollars, at least.”

The soldier does not react to the weak joke. He looks at his body, gestures to it. Hawkeye looks and realizes that no one had thought to close the corpse’s eyes. He does so, earning the ghost’s approving nod.

“Sorry. I--I’m sorry you didn’t make it. I did what I could.”

The soldier shrugs. Maybe he knew this was coming from the start, from the moment he was brought down at the front. It’s strange to Hawkeye, how easily some mortals can accept their inevitable demise. He doesn’t believe he himself could ever be so calm, and _he_ knows what’s out there where mortal men can only hope and guess.

“We should go somewhere quieter. It’s time for you to move on.” Hawkeye lifts a placating hand in the face of the dead man’s sudden uncertainty. “I’ll go with you as far as I can go. It’s all right. You won’t be alone.”

Hawkeye and the ghost leave the OR and walk across the compound. It’s a few hours until the dawn wake up call, and other than the lone night patrol sulking about from tent to tent, all is still and silent. Hawk takes the ghost to the supply tent. It’s foremost in his mind as a safe and private place.

Hawkeye approaches the soldier. He’s older than Hawkeye--older than Hawkeye _looks,_ that is--by at least a decade. He has the serious, accepting eyes of a career man who has been in more than one war.

“I need to listen,” Hawkeye explains, waving in the general direction of the empty air next to the man’s ear. “May I?”

The soldier’s eyes narrow slightly, but he goes to attention and gives one short, jerky nod. 

Hawkeye leans forward and rests his chin on the shorter man’s broad shoulder. The strings pull and sound when plucked. Low, toneless notes. It’s as Hawkeye had expected. The dead man comes from a long line of soldiers, none of whom made it very high in the ranks but always did their sworn duty. He’s career army through and through, as devoted to the American people as Frank Burns had always wished to be. Very little else of the man’s life rings through other than that. Devotion to his job, devotion to his place as a cog in the wheel of the world. And pride in that work. And total acceptance that, eventually, that work would kill him.

Hawkeye pulls back and takes in a shaky breath. He has no idea what this journey will be like based on the evidence he has just acquired. The very tapestry of the dead man’s life is...unassuming, rendered in flat, uninspired hues.

“I’d salute you,” Hawkeye tells the man, mildly, “but that’s really not my style. I’m a doctor first and foremost and a soldier not at all. I think this war is pointless and stupid and nothing more than an opportunity for profiteers and talking heads to trade the lives of good men for their own gain. I’m telling you this because we’re about to go on a very long trip together, and the fact that you and I don’t see eye to eye could make it...well, let’s just say ‘interesting,’ for now, and leave it at that. Do you have a problem with me? Not that it matters if you do. I’m the only option you’ve got if you want to see paradise. But you should still know how things stand.”

The ghost gives him a slow nod and nothing more. He’s blank faced and waiting, standing at perfect attention. 

Hawkeye tries not to resent the man overly much for his reserved, stony nature. 

The light appears on its cue. Hawkeye gestures toward it in a grand sweep of his arm. “After you, Major.”

The ghost steps forward with no hesitation. He outranks Hawkeye by a fair bit, but in this situation, it’s obvious that Hawkeye, lowly Captain, has the upper hand. His obedience could make this an easy journey. Perhaps. Hawkeye has learned to lower his expectations over the last few months. Even the simplest pathways seem fraught with danger, these days. 

The light gives him the usual shiver. He turns his head to take in their surroundings and--

“W-what? No. Oh, no.” 

There is no path. Well, there is. He can see the faint glow of the light ahead, and there is a clear stretch of ground between them and it. But it’s not--it’s--

“Oh, gods. It’s a literal tunnel. It’s a _tunnel_.”

The dead man turns to look at Hawkeye, clearly not sure why he’s making such a fuss. 

Hawkeye steps back, hands behind him, fingers groping as if hoping to find the gateway that brought them there. It’s not there anymore, of course. His hands only encounter rock. It’s nothing but craggy walls of solid stone on all sides, all around. No sky. No horizon. Just the walls, closing in. 

He hates enclosed spaces. He’s a being made for the open sky. It’s been the hardest part of playing human, how often he finds himself in crowded rooms with four walls and no windows. On busy days, the OR is made all the more horrible for the _pressure_. He always takes a deep, calming breath before entering the ambulance buses to collect their patients. This, though, this is so much worse than all of that. There is only one way out, and it’s far, far ahead. 

There can’t possibly be enough air in here.

The face of the dead man appears before him. He’s talking--rather a lot, based on the silent movement of his lips. Hawkeye realizes that somehow he’s backed himself up into the solid rock wall behind them, pressed himself into a rounded corner, and is curling in on himself, his arms over his head as if that will do anything against the falling stone. Wait. There _is_ a noise. Hawkeye himself, muttering nonsense. In Greek. Not nonsense, after all, once he’s in a state to listen. He’s been mindlessly reciting an old invocation to Zeus, his father. He begs for mercy, for help and guidance out of this place.

Zeus has not spoken with him in over a thousand years. He’s not about to start here, now. Hawkeye falls silent, cutting himself off mid-word. He breathes raggedly in the sudden silence. The noise echoes against the rock.

“I-uh. I’m--,” he tries to explain to the soldier. He swallows thickly. He’s clammy and sweating, dizzy. His heart gallops in his chest. If he wasn’t so busy being terrified, he’d feel embarrassed. 

The dead man puts a hand on his shoulder and gives it a tight squeeze. He’s talking again. Hawkeye can tell by his expression that he’s speaking with intensity. A military pep talk, probably. Trying to pull a shell shocked soldier back onto the battlefield. 

“I can’t hear you,” Hawkeye tells him. “I can’t hear you. You’re dead. You have secrets, now, that no other ears are permitted to hear. Just--save your breath, Major. Hypothetically speaking.”

The Major frowns, but his lips stop moving. He gives Hawkeye’s shoulder a rough shake and points way, way down the tunnel, where the light shines. 

“I know. I know. Just--I need a minute. Oh, who am I kidding? A minute or a millennia, it won’t make a difference. Do you know the walls are coming down? I can see it. Feel it. We’re going to be smothered here, trapped in the dark.” Hawkeye babbles, practically climbing the dead man’s body to get back on his own feet. 

Hawkeye closes his eyes, but that doesn’t make the feeling of pressure go away. There’s no escape. No escape but one. He opens his eyes again and takes a few mincing steps. It makes no sense to hang about at the start of the tunnel. There is no entrance, after all. Only an exit.

“Is it just me or is the path getting narrower?” Hawkeye asks, but he knows it’s just him. “Gods, I wish I _could_ hear you. I’d kill--oops, slip of the tongue, sorry--for a distraction, right now. A game of twenty questions or I, Spy or something. Not that there’s anything to see here. E-Except a lot of rock. A lot of very close rocks.”

The dead man grabs at Hawkeye’s arm, keeps him moving forward rather than allowing him to sink to his knees. 

“Right, right, okay. Well. It’s fine. I can--I can talk enough for two people. Hell, I can talk enough for a dozen people, and I often do. It’s all I ever do in the OR, you know. Talk. Joke. It keeps me from screaming, mostly, from just standing back and letting the butchered man on my table bleed out. But it also keeps the walls where they belong. Which is important. We’re going to be fine, though. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in a place like this. Hell, I was--I was b-born in a cave, actually. I-my mother was a mistress of Zeus. She was afraid for her life, and rightly so. Hera. _Gods_. It wasn’t just that she was jealous. Of course she’d be jealous--my father was shameless, the way he couldn’t commit--but Hera always directed her anger at the wrong party, you know? So my mother, knowing Hera’s tendency to lash out at her husband’s mistresses, she hid away in a cave. And that’s where I was born. In a hole in the g-ground. A h-hole in the ground, even--even smaller than--. Even smaller than--.”

Hawkeye sways as the world gives a lurch and a spin. He stumbles over to one of the too-close walls of rock and rests his palms against it as he retches. There’s very little in his stomach but bile, and it burns. He has sudden renewed sympathy for what BJ had gone through the first day they’d met. 

No one comes to hold his head, however. When he’s done, he pushes himself roughly away from the mess, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. The dead man stands just where Hawkeye left him, watching, placid and patient. 

“Okay, so let’s not talk about my mother,” Hawkeye says in a croaking voice. “How do you like music? Do you know ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’?” Hawkeye clears his throat, warbling through the first several lines. He glances over at the silent soldier, who just shrugs. All right. Not exactly a fan, but not a critic, either.

Hawkeye starts to walk again, singing as they go. Eventually, he delves into his wide repertoire of drinking songs, which helps lighten the mood considerably more.

There is _nothing_ in this tunnel. That’s what occupies the small part of Hawkeye’s brain that he can spare on it. There are no regrets, no sins, no boogie men and monsters of this dead man’s subconscious mind. There is also nothing with color, with beauty, with warmth. There is no _sky_. 

Hawkeye stops walking. He stopped singing several yards back, unable to modulate his breathing enough to carry on. His knees are weak, his limbs as ungainly as cooked rice noodles. He sits down. The soldier spares one brief, impatient glance toward the waiting light. But, in the end, he sits, too, and looks at Hawkeye with inscrutable eyes. 

“Do you have _feelings_?” Hawkeye blurts out. “I don’t mean to insult you, I honestly want to know. I’d believe you’re just reserved, that the military has taught you to keep your cards close to your chest, except I’ve heard the song of your life, bud, and I’m sitting, right now, in the very essence of your soul and it’s--well, it’s _this_.”

The soldier looks around them, taking in the sight of rock, rock, and more rock. He lifts a shoulder in a small shrug.

Hawkeye looks over to the glow of the light of this man’s resting place. They are still very far away from it--or maybe the distance seems especially long to Hawkeye’s anxious gaze. He has other concerns besides the encroaching walls, however. He’s beginning to worry about what, exactly, lies on the other side of the light’s comforting glow for the dead man sitting across from him. 

“What do you love most?” Hawkeye asks. “I know you can’t answer me, but I want you to think about it.”

The man looks faintly incredulous, but he obligingly looks off into space, clearly thinking.

Hawkeye waits and presses a hand to his own chest in an unconscious tic. He can hear nothing but his pounding pulse, blood rushing in his ears. He swallows reflexively, watching the walls for movement.

The dead man holds something out to him. He’s learned a few things about his ‘body,’ it seems. Hawkeye had told him before--it’s all an illusion. The ghost doesn’t need to wear the wounds that killed him. He also doesn’t have to walk around with nothing in his pockets.

Hawkeye squints at the object the dead man holds. If he takes it from him, the photograph will disappear. It’s a bit confounding to him, at first. He’s seen many photos from the pockets of his friends and colleagues at the 4077th, of course. He’s used to seeing portraits of loved ones--spouses and children--or photos of entire extended families, large groups of people with similar, smiling faces. 

The photo the soldier holds is of a dog. A big German Shepherd sprawled out on grass, tongue rolling in the apparent heat. She’s wearing someone’s helmet over an ear. 

“Oh,” Hawkeye says, with surprise. “She’s-she’s cute. I’d ask what her name is, but you can’t tell me. Where is she now?”

The soldier shrugs. Points at the light and looks at Hawkeye in question.

Hawkeye nods, understanding. “She died. Well. I’m afraid I don’t know much about the souls of animals, Major. But I do know that the honorable dead are reunited in the afterlife. I don’t see why that shouldn’t include your Fido, there.”

Hawkeye makes the mistake of looking down the tunnel at the waiting light. His perception of it narrows and lengths. Literal tunnel vision. He swallows and puts his head down between his knees, breathing through his nose. 

“W-what what do you hate most?” Hawkeye asks, muffled.

He looks up as much as he can, watching the soldier shrug.

“There must be something,” Hawkeye presses. 

The soldier shakes his head, looks away. 

“Major--I’m--I’m trying to help you, here. Don’t leave me hanging.”

The dead man clenches a fist. Hawkeye wonders if he’s about to get hit. The soldier doesn’t lunge for him, however. All he does is lift his knotted fingers and pound them a few times--silently--against his own sternum. His face is serious, maybe a little angry after all this prodding. 

“I don’t understand,” Hawkeye replies, carefully. “Why? What have you done?”

The dead man looks out at the tunnel. Hawkeye wisely does not follow his gaze. Instead, he watches the ghost’s face as it morphs through muted expressions of doubt, frustration, and sorrow. 

The dead man touches the hard stone floor with his fingertips and looks up at Hawkeye with questioning eyes.

“Uh, the tunnel, yeah.” Hawkeye has gotten very good at charades over the past centuries, but it’s still never _easy_. 

The soldier knocks his knuckles gently against the stone and then points at himself. 

“Yeah, it’s--it’s yours. Everything here is you. Your fears, your failures. Your hopes, your victories. Everything you’ve done appears here as aid or obstacle to your path to eternal rest.” He pauses. “I’ve never seen a pathway like this, before. I don’t understand it.” He also doesn’t _like_ it, but he figures the soldier knows that, by now. 

The soldier nods and gets to his feet. Hawkeye scrambles up after him. “Wait a minute, we’re not done talking.”

The soldier ignores his orders--the first time he has--and crosses the narrow ground of the tunnel to the opposite curved wall. Hawkeye follows him on unsteady feet, keeping his eyes on the ghost’s back in an attempt not to vomit again.

He watches as the dead man raises his fist. This time, he pounds his knuckles solidly against the stone. It would hurt a living man, but the ghost doesn’t so much as flinch. He pounds again. 

To Hawkeye’s horror, the tunnel begins to tremble, threatening a full on quake. “Hey, wait! Stop! Stop!” Hawkeye yelps, staggering back a few steps, losing his balance in the shaking. The stone above shifts. Small stones and torrents of dust fall on their heads. Hawkeye screams and curls into a ball of self-protection, arms over his head.

Then, it all goes silent and still. Slowly, Hawkeye retreats and looks around. The dead man stands before what was once a solid stone wall and is now a giant, gaping hole. On the other side, Hawkeye sees an ominous, stormy sky and brittle, winter-twisted trees. The air that flows into the remains of the tunnel is bitterly cold. 

Hawkeye practically pushes the dead man aside as he runs forward and hops through the hole into the open world. He breathes in deeply of the cold air, not caring that everything is freezing and damp. He jumps and hollers for joy, grinning from ear to ear. Behind him, the dead man slowly leaves the tunnel and walks up to Hawkeye’s side, his eyes following the level dirt path cutting through the blanket of snow and the glowing light that waits at the end of it.

Hawkeye’s common sense finally catches up to his overwhelming feelings of relief. He staggers--with giddiness, not fear--and manages to control his near-hysterical laughter. He gestures widely at the new light. “It’s okay. It’s--it’s still yours. I think. I don’t know what just happened. But everything looks all right.” He looks around at the cold, winter scene. Glances up at the thick, black clouds that seem to hang inches above their heads. “Mostly.”

The soldier gives a curt nod. His jaw is tight, and his fists are, too, at his sides. Hawkeye turns to him, grabs his shoulder and gives it a shake similar to the one the dead man had used on him before. “Don’t worry. This is much more familiar ground, for me. Whatever is out there, we can handle it together.”

The soldier glances behind his shoulder at the tunnel. The unassuming tunnel with no monsters and no beauty. A flat, perfect facade to cover this, the icy, eerie landscape underneath. Hawkeye is starting to understand. He’d been right before. The military life _has_ taught the Major to keep his cards close. The tunnel was just that--a lie, hiding the truth. A mask. Hawkeye understands those sorts of deceptions intimately. He should have recognized it immediately. Maybe he would have, if not for the distraction of his claustrophobia.

“Let’s get moving,” Hawkeye says, determined. They have wasted a lot of time, covering ground that means nothing and goes nowhere. It’s time to see what the dead man is really made of. 

The soldier stays back as Hawkeye strides forward. Hawkeye turns, starts walking backward. “Hey, come on. You don’t have to be afraid of it. It’s you. All of it is. Sure, the clouds are spooky and you may get frostbite, but look! The path is perfect. A nice, easy walk. And the trees may be dormant, but hey! Snow’s starting to fall, and it’s beautiful. It really is.”

The soldier shakes his head and stays put. He turns as if to go back into the tunnel, to walk into that light, instead. Hawkeye grabs at the back of his uniform jacket. 

“No, Major. You can’t. I don’t think it’ll get you where you want to go, now.”

The soldier’s shoulders slump and he turns around again, staring at the winter landscape with a hangdog expression. Hawkeye smiles at him, puts an arm about his shoulders and gives the man a side hug. The soldier stands stiffly, staring ahead with no expression. “It’s an adventure of self-discovery. It’s not always easy or safe, it’s true. But it will be worth it. I promise.”

The soldier raises an eyebrow. Maybe Hawkeye’s letting his giddiness over the open air shine through a little too much. Slowly, the ghost pokes Hawkeye in the chest and then points back to the hated tunnel. Hawkeye gets it. ‘If that’s how you feel about it, buddy, go right ahead.’

Hawkeye grins. “Nice try, but this isn’t my circus. Whatever self-improvement I need to experience, I’ll do it on my own time, thanks.” He steps forward, tugging the soldier along with him. “Come on. Don’t make me call you chicken.”

The soldier huffs a silent snort--he’s more demonstrative already, Hawkeye notes--and allows himself to be literally herded along like a stubborn mule. 

Hawkeye yelps when the ground beneath his foot suddenly disappears.

The path they walk on now is unstable. Hawkeye is impressed by the complexity of the landscape around them, all things considered. As the dirt falls away, he realizes immediately that it’s yet another facade, another superficial lie covering a deeper truth. They step forward as quickly as possible, trying to outpace the growing sinkhole. Behind them, the dirt sinks in and drops away. It’s hard to get a good look at it as they flee, but Hawkeye cranes his neck a few times in the chaos and finds that what stretches out below them is a massive pit. All he can see in its depths is endless darkness.

Hawkeye takes ahold of the soldier’s hand and doesn’t let go, even when the dead man tries to pull forward and away. “One of us might fall!” he snaps. Besides, he feels the need to keep a close leash on the ghost. The man is much more wily than he had first appeared. It’s easier to think on what he sees, what they experience, now that he is away from the crushing terror of the tunnel. All of these layers, all of this self-deception...it’s more ominous, even, than the dark clouds above their heads. Whatever storm is coming, Hawkeye wants a good hold on the dead man when it finally hits.

Hawkeye fails to pick up a foot fast enough--his ankles are starting to protest the length of the journey--and he yelps, one leg falling in the sudden absence of ground. The dead man’s hold on him tightens, and the ghost continues his own forward momentum, pulling Hawkeye with him. “Wait!” Hawkeye shouts with sudden realization, stumbling behind the dead man as he breaks into a more determined run. “ _Wait_. Stop running. Stop. We have to fall!”

The dead man ignores him.

“Stop!” Hawkeye repeats, digging in his heels. The soldier tugs at him as he continues to run and, finding resistance, lets go of Hawkeye completely. The ground beneath Hawkeye’s bare feet goes to mushy sand and trickles away in seconds. Hawkeye starts to fall, the blackness swallowing him. On the way down, he grabs at the dead man’s boots and pulls him after. If Hawkeye could hear the dead, he’s sure his ears would be ringing with the ghost’s angry screams. 

As they fall, Hawkeye pulls the ghost to him, wraps himself around the dead man. The Major trembles, gasping for unneeded air, the whites of his eyes flashing utter terror. Hawkeye recognizes that fear--it is the same fear he’d felt in the tunnel reflected back at him. Whatever lurks here, the Major fears it more than anything else he’s witnessed so far. 

“It’s going to be okay!” Hawkeye yells at him, raising his voice over the rushing whistle of the air past their ears as they fall. “Whatever it is, I can help! I will help!”

There is light below their feet. Not the glow of paradise, but a sickly, yellow light like that of several lit candles. In the dim, Hawkeye can see the ground below, coming at them fast. He tightens his hold on the dead man, cradles his skull in a hand, and turns their bodies in the air, his back turned toward the rapidly-approaching stone.

They land hard with a loud crunch. All the air flies from Hawkeye’s lungs and he is left gasping, choking on pain. His arms fall limply to his sides and the dead man rolls away from him with a graceful move worthy of the trenches. 

Hawkeye, staring up, sees that the dark, black clouds are drifting apart and away. Far, far above them, the sky is inky blue-black and full of stars. They have made some kind of progress. To what end, Hawkeye is unsure. 

Slowly, he sits up. His body hurts, but it’s the ache of blunt trauma and bruising, not broken bones. He takes a few deep, purposeful breaths to replace the air that had been knocked out of him. Meanwhile, the Major paces the dimly lit area, growling like a tiger in a cage. Hawkeye stands. It is--thank all the gods--an enormous space, more like an open canyon now that they’ve destroyed so much of the topsoil above. The light is minimal, but it’s enough to see that the canyon is made of stone and red clay. A natural phenomena--as natural as a subconscious illusion of a space can be, of course.

“What is this, Major?” Hawkeye asks the dead man. He suspects that the ghost knows more of his inner landscape than he would like to admit. These layers of deception are not accidental. They were formed and placed with care. First, the unassuming tunnel that gave nothing away. Then, the more demonstrative winter landscape that said _something_ but was built on hollow ground. And, now, this. A deep pit, as featureless and silent as the tunnel had been, but in a different way. “How deep down do these lies you tell yourself go, exactly? Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got all the time in the world to explore every inch of it. I’m just curious.”

The soldier shakes his head, pounding his silent fists against the clay wall in anger, his frustration clearer and sharper than ever before. Whatever they are doing here, it’s vital. There is a real man at the heart of this puzzle box, Hawkeye is sure. They just have to keep digging. 

“Major,” Hawkeye says, gently. He goes to the soldier, takes his hand again. The man jerks back--stumbles back as if burned, in fact, a familiar terror in his eye. It’s markedly different from the still, careful way the man had held himself before when Hawkeye had pressed close and listened to the woven tapestry of his life.

Hawkeye reaches out to the man again, though he doesn’t touch. “I want to hear you again,” Hawkeye says, speaking carefully as if to a dangerous animal. “That’s all. I just need to get close again so I can listen. May I, please?”

The soldier looks at him suspiciously. He says something, gesturing with his hands for pointed emphasis. His expression is defensive, angry. He steps up to Hawkeye, pokes his chest a few times as he rants. Hawkeye frowns, watching his lips and, for once, catches a word in the mouthing of it. He blinks.

“Did you just call me a ‘faggot’?” he asks, more shocked than offended. 

The soldier stops speaking. He looks away. His arms wrap around himself in a gesture of defense and self-comfort. He rocks his weight from foot to foot, jittery. It’s very unmilitary. 

“It’s all right if you did. I mean, it’s not all right at all--you shouldn’t use language like that at anyone, especially someone trying to help you. But I’m not upset at the implication. Humans used to be a lot more open minded about those things where I’m from, you know. I get it. Times change, attitudes change with them. But I don’t agree with modern theories about sex and love. I don’t _have_ to agree with them; I’m not human. And, personally, I’m interested in all genders who are interested in me.” Hawkeye pulls off his jacket. It’s very warm in the pit, not at all like the icy road above. He tosses the clothing aside. He’ll get it back when this trip is done and he returns to the living world. “So, if you want to call me that, you can. It’s technically accurate. But I gotta say, I’m still hurt. I’m trying to get you to your paradise. I know this hasn’t been an easy journey for you, so far, but it’s not a walk in the park for me, either. So maybe cool your head and reconsider throwing slurs at your friends, huh?”

The soldier stares at him. To Hawkeye’s confusion, tears are collecting, unheeded, in his eyes. Hawkeye offers his hand to the dead man again. 

“Let me listen,” he repeats. “Please.”

The soldier moves from his tightly wound, self-soothing posture to a somewhat sloppy parade rest. He gives a nod of consent, and Hawkeye steps forward, resting his chin against the man’s shoulder once more. He plucks a thread and nearly jerks back in surprise at the complete difference in the sound. Where once he heard a series of low, toneless notes, now there is a mangle of music, like the cacophony of three or four records being played at once. Hawkeye closes his eyes and focuses past the dissonance, reaching for the threads he needs to better understand.

A boy sits on his bed in the family barracks, waiting for his father to come home. He’s in trouble. So is Billy Michaelson, a fellow teen whose family just transferred to the base. In a few days, Billy and his family will disappear without warning, as if they were never here at all. Later on, grown up. His buddy from basic keeps a hand on his shoulder a bit too long. It feels good, feels comforting and right. They make eye contact, and he sees the invitation in his friend’s eyes. He accepts the offer and then immediately reports his buddy to their CO, and his friend disappears just as abruptly as Billy Michaelson had years before. Later still, he wears a disguise--civvies and a slouch--and waits in a city in Europe outside a bar with a...certain reputation. He watches folks go in, keeps his face blank and free of disgust--or longing--or both. Finally, he works up the nerve and goes inside to sit at the bar for a while. A man comes to him, buys him a drink. They go outside and kiss in the alley. The soldier pushes the other man away without warning. His fists smash against the civilian’s nose. Blood everywhere, but no screaming. The civilian is smarter than to call attention down on them, and he leaves in silence, shaking in fear. He leaves the man alone in the alley, cursing softly and holding his nose. Later on still, keeping only to himself, the dead man’s eyes linger anywhere but the faces of the men with whom he serves. Deflecting questions--again and again--about his lack of wife and kids, with a casual shrug and something trite on his lips. He goes back to an empty tent day after day after day and all he ever lets himself feel any feeling for at all is the camp dog, a stray he rescues from starvation and the cold. She takes a shine to him, and he loves her, and when she gets sick and dies, he throws himself back into war and is relieved, _relieved_ when he hears the shell come and feels his brains explode under the force of it.

Hawkeye wants to pull back. He wants to stop feeling the warmth of this man’s body, stop hearing the terrible cacophony of his memories _right now_. Instead, he turns his cheek to rest where his chin had rested. He closes his arms gently around the dead man’s shoulders, breathes in air that holds no scent and only a deceptive illusion of warmth. “All right,” he says, softly, murmuring against the dead man’s neck. “I get it, now. All right.” He tightens his embrace and, when no violence is forthcoming, tilts his head back just slightly and kisses along the line of the man’s jaw. 

The soldier tenses, then goes ragdoll limp, much of his weight crashing down against Hawkeye, who gamely holds him up. The dead man’s arms lift and return Hawkeye’s tight hug. He buries his face against Hawkeye’s shoulder and, devoid of voice, weeps in total silence. Hawkeye cannot hear his sobs or feel his tears as they fall away from his cheeks, but he watches the shaking of the ghost’s shoulders and understands.

“You did your best,” Hawkeye whispers as the dead man’s sobs start to die down. “You made mistakes. You hurt innocent people, some of whom loved you. But you did what you did to survive. And you’ve already sacrificed so much, soldier. Your ability to love. Your entire life. Your very soul. For years you’ve been nothing but a slab of stone over an icy wasteland built on shifting sands covering up a hollowed out void, Major. That’s punishment enough. It’s over. It’s over. You have to let it all go. Let go, sweetheart. I’m here. I’m here for you.”

Around them, the walls of the canyon begin to melt away like snow thawing in the sun. Hawkeye watches the shifting landscape with only partial attention, most of his focus on keeping the dead man upright, of murmuring words of comfort into his ear. 

“Look,” Hawkeye says, when enough time has passed and the change is complete. “It’s all right. Just look.” He pushes gently against the Major’s shoulders, forcing him to stand on his own two feet and take notice of the world around them. 

A rustic stone path in a heavily wooded forest, all the trees heavy with lush green leaves though they grow stunted, their trunks twisted up in knots. The sky above is a dark, unblemished blue. The air is just a bit nippy, the promise of a nighttime frost hanging in the air. There are potholes in the pathway, scattered but shallow. The grass is dead in places, browned prematurely by the frost. But the ground stays firm against their feet, and though the air is chilly, it is not uncomfortable. Ahead, just a few feet, is the light. This time, Hawkeye is certain that what they see is true, and they’ll make it to their destination with no more interruptions. 

The Major rubs his wet cheeks on the back of his hands and looks around, clearly stunned. He gestures out to the landscape and then points, hesitantly, at himself. 

“It’s you. Really, this time. Isn’t it nice? Oh, a little rough around the edges. A little damaged in places. But it’s you, really and truly. And right there, that light? That’s your ticket to a better place. Are you ready?”

The Major frowns, uncertain and self-conscious.

Hawkeye grabs at his hands and turns the dead man to face him. He tilts his head down and kisses the man full on the lips. The man returns it, after a beat of tense and fearful heistation. Gently, reluctantly, Hawkeye pulls away. “Your sins are yours, as are the sins of every man. But what’s done is done, Major. Your monsters have been put to rest. Now it’s _your_ turn to get some shut eye.”

The Major swallows thickly, but he nods. He starts forward, and Hawkeye follows close behind him. They hold hands every remaining step. 

As the Major peers into the light no great, all-encompassing joy pulls over his severe features. Instead, he closes his eyes in relief, a sense of overwhelming contentment radiating from him like heat. Just before he steps through, he turns to Hawkeye and mouths--with great care--two words that none of the dead have given him since the start of this terrible war. ‘Thank you.’

And then he’s gone, and the living world comes back to Hawkeye in a blink.

\--

“Heard you lost your head injury patient,” BJ says when they finally reconnect again in the Swamp. “I’m sorry.”

Hawkeye nods. “Major Trisen. He was a good man.”

BJ hums knowingly. “You look to be in one piece. Easy journey?”

Hawkeye grimaces. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly. The villain of the piece was unusual, in this case. Fewer tanks and tigers. More...well, the business of the dead is their business. I’m fine.”

“Fine enough to help me get back at Charles?”

Hawkeye sits up in his cot, all ears. “What’d he do? Nevermind, I don’t care. Of course I’m interested, tell me all of your sordid plans immediately.”

BJ laughs and hands Hawkeye a full martini glass. They fall into an easy rhythm of give and take, planning out a series of pranks to put their egotistical bunkmate in his place. Most of it gets too silly, too grandiose to actually put into effect, but by the time they’ve hatched out a solid, workable plan, Hawkeye feels lighter and more content than he has in days, and BJ himself can’t seem to stop giggling. 

“To getting back to our roots,” Hawkeye says, holding up his glass for a toast. BJ goes to toast it and misses by a mile, which makes BJ laugh even harder.

“To that,” BJ agrees, and they both drink.

\--

For a few weeks after the armistice is called on the Great Prank War of ‘52 (war called off due to the raining down of wrath by Colonel Sherman Potter, who calls Hawkeye, BJ, Klinger, and Charles into his office like they are four errant boys in short pants and proceeds to give them the verbal tanning of their lives), everything returns to normal--or as close to normal as things get for the folks stationed at the 4077th. Wounded come in, wounded leave. The fighting stops for a few days--some concession to the truce talks, according to the sparse reports coming in from HQ--and, without warning, everyone is left with empty hands, wondering what to do with themselves during the long hours.

Hawkeye is sick to death of board games, card games, and Charles Winchester. So, he borrows a bit of nail polish from the nurses and carefully applies a tiny dollop onto every one of Charles’s precious phonograph needles. He watches with casual interest as the man tries one point after another only to hear nothing but grating static.

“You!” Charles bellows, taking several menacing steps toward him. “ _You_.”

“Me, me?” Hawkeye repeats, dryly. “Charles, if you want me to serenade you, all you need to do is ask, just let me finish this warm up-- _mimimimi_.”

“You monstrous, malicious--!”

“Malingering, masticating--,” Hawkeye suggests, with delight. 

“--I shall _destroy_ you,” Charles finishes. 

Silence falls. Hawkeye frowns, looking Charles up and down from his sprawl on his cot. Charles has one foot forward, his surgeon’s hands clenched into fists. Charles _might_ be willing to hit him, but probably not--he’s too worried about the delicate nature of his talented fingers. 

“Well? Charles, I’m going to die of suspense.”

Charles growls low and clears his throat, adopting a casual, calm posture. He pats at what remains of his hair. “No. No, I think not, Pierce. I would love to kill you, but, honestly, I wouldn’t wish to give you the satisfaction.”

“Sure,” Hawkeye agrees, as if that makes any sense. “So, can I go back to my magazine now, or--?” He holds up the nudist magazine in his hands, making damn sure that Charles sees the open centerfold.

“ _Disgusting_ ,” Charles says, turning away pointedly.

Hawkeye looks down at the pages in his hands. “Charles, don’t say such things about Miss Sugah Deerheart. You’ll hurt her feelings.”

“Buffoon,” Charles strikes back, glowering. “Don’t you have somewhere else you could be in this moment?”

Hawkeye pretends to mull that one over. “A lot of places, probably. The mess tent, Rosie’s, Maine.”

“Then why are you _here_ , bothering me? Where is your manky little partner in uncouth crime?”

“Post-op. You should know that, Charles. He switched shifts with you, remember? So that you could be available for that phone call from home you’ve been waiting for. Then again, I’m sure you can’t be expected to remember the noble sacrifices made by us ‘manky’ criminals for your benefit.”

“Humph.”

Hawkeye puts down his magazine and really looks at the other man, studying the curve of his back. “Charles, what’s your beef? Something disastrous occur at the home manor? Has a maid stolen the silverware? Some scandal at the club?”

“I have no ‘beef.’ Except, perhaps, with you, you sabotaging cretin. I hope you realize that I fully expect you to replace these needles you’ve ruined. I refuse to spend a cent on replacements.”

Hawkeye sighs. “Sure, Charles. I’ll get you new ones. Just--look, you know I think you’re a pompous, loud-mouthed, egotistical bag of hot air. And you _are_ all those things. But we take care of our own around these parts. If something is really bothering you--.”

“I would never entrust _you_ with my troubles--.”

“--Not me, you bourgeiose dunce. Talk to Father Mulcahy. Or Potter. Or, hell, Klinger, if you can stop verbally abusing him long enough to get out your heart-to-heart.”

“Pierce, why do you _care_?”

Hawkeye hides his face behind his magazine, staring fixedly into the eyes of Sugah Deerheart. “Who says I care? You’re just not yourself when you’re upset about something, Charles--somehow, you’re even worse. Look, I’m just saying that there are plenty of people here who will help you. All you have to do is ask.”

A long, drawn out silence. Then, stiffly. “Thank you, Pierce. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Hawkeye hums and goes back to flipping through the old magazine. He’s surprised when Charles perches himself against the quiet furnace and says, haltingly, “It’s my sister, you see.”

Hawkeye frowns, tossing his magazine aside and giving Charles his full attention. He likes Honoria Winchester, despite knowing her so little. He’s heard the stories that Charles tells of her, has even heard her recorded messages to her brother from time to time. She’s just as stuffy and cultured as all the Winchesters seem to be, sure, but there’s an additional layer to her that her dear brother lacks. Honoria’s love of culture and refinement is born of a deeper love of people, not of elitism for elitisms sake. Hawkeye can appreciate that and the woman herself by extension. Besides, for all that he’s a prig, Charles’s love for his sister is as unending and unquestionable as his fervent love of music. If something has happened to her, it must be tearing the man up inside and out.

“I’m listening.”

The story that Charles recounts is no great tragedy--Honoria has simply made the acquaintance of yet another individual below her station, it seems--but it still seems to do the man’s troubled mind some good to rant and rave about it to a pair of mostly willing ears. Hawkeye keeps his council on the matter to himself and even refrains from making (too many) jokes at the expense of Charles’s giant ego. In the end, when Charles has finally blustered himself out and run out of steam, they share a solemn drink from the still. It’s not quite friendship, but it’s more than animosity, and Hawkeye is grateful to have that with the difficult man, at last. After that, the wary truce within the walls of the Swamp becomes much more genuine. Hawkeye even replaces the destroyed needles, as promised, and throws in a few new records of Charles’s beloved “longhair” music, besides. (In 1943, Hermes--using a different name and persona, then, and enjoying a brief leave--attended Rachmaninoff’s final public performance at the University of Tennessee. Afterward, he had wandered out into the streets in a state of such overwrought emotion that he’d nearly gotten himself mowed down by a passing cab, his eyes too blurred by tears to see the oncoming car. Sometimes, when BJ isn’t in ear shot, Hawkeye encourages Charles to play Sonata No. 2, op. 36, and he doesn’t even mind the way the high volume of the record player rattles the eaves of the tent.)

\--

In hindsight, it is only a matter of time before Hawkeye’s secret is revealed. Benjamin Franklin--the real one, not him--said it best: Three people can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead. Secrets have a way of coming to light in a place such as this, where people live in each other’s pockets for months and years on end. He knew this from the start, in truth. The knowledge had kept him on foot and constantly uprooted through all his previous wars. He had been lonely, was the thing. He’s not lonely, anymore--at least, he is _less_ lonely, now. If the price to pay for that comradery is his privacy...well, he’s not sure if it’s a price he’ll regret paying. Suffice to say, the decision is taken entirely out of his hands the minute Klinger bursts through the supply closet doors without so much as clearing his throat beforehand.

“Klinger!” Hawkeye shouts the moment he sees the tip of the man’s notable nose. “ _Knock_ , would you? It’s the _supply closet_. You know what goes on in here!”

Klinger halts just inside the doorway of the tent, his arms full to bursting with recently inspected boxes of aspirin bottles. (Recently, they’ve received more placebos than actual medication in their regular shipments; Colonel Potter has every man and woman aboard working overtime to examine each and every pill before they pass into the hands of the wounded.)

“I _do_ know what goes on in here, sir,” Klinger agrees in a flat, even tone. “Which is why I gotta ask: What the hell is going on in here right now? ‘Cos it’s not what I’d expect.”

Hawkeye is, indeed, not currently in a compromising position with a nurse or a soldier (though, admittedly, Klinger has caught him in such acts in this exact tent before). He is, however, in a compromising position with his own feet. More specifically, with the wings branching out from his ankles. 

“Sit down before you fall down, Klinger,” Hawkeye advises. The man is looking rather green. Slowly, Klinger sets his precious cargo down on an empty expanse of shelf and approaches where Hawkeye perches on one of the small wooden tables set up in the tent for organizing cargo. He has his left foot up on a crate of bandages. His wings fall limply against the flat surface of the box, laid out equally flat so Hawkeye can better examine the damage. 

“Those look bad,” Klinger says, his eyes fixated on the knobby bones of Hawkeye’s ankles and they way they sprout out. Hawkeye shifts awkwardly under the scrutiny. His wings are becoming a sore subject for him--in both the literal and metaphorical sense. 

“They aren’t good,” Hawkeye agrees, carefully, watching Klinger’s every move with a wary eye. If Klinger bolts out of his tent with damning accusations on his lips, Hawkeye will be forced to tackle him bodily to the ground. His eyes dart around the tent, wondering idly what is within reach that would make a suitable gag.

“You’ve done some pretty weird stuff before, Captain, but I think this might be at the very top of the list.”

“Heh. If only. Listen, Klinger. This is a secret. You get that, right?”

Klinger blinks slowly as if coming out of a daze. “Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure. Absolutely. Of course. I mean, obviously.”

“Klinger,” Hawkeye drawls, “I think the lady doth protest too much.”

“Huh?”

“ _A secret_ ,” Hawkeye hisses. “Nobody else hears about this from you or me or _anybody_ , all right?”

“What would I tell ‘em?” Klinger asks. “I don’t even know what I’m lookin’ at, here!”

“Good!” Hawkeye says. He reaches out for fresh bandages and starts to wrap his wings back up as they were before. “The less you know, the less you can blab to the whole camp.”

“Geez, sir. You have no faith in me at all, do you?”

“Honestly? No. But don’t take it personally, Max. I don’t have faith in anything or anybody. In any other situation, I’d be applauding your innate desire to shake up the status quo. I admire your innovation, your greediness, and that slimy, conniving brain of yours, Klinger, I really do. But trust _you_? What am I, a chump?”

“Hey, don’t do it like that,” Klinger says, ignoring Hawkeye’s tirade completely. 

Hawkeye’s hands still mid-motion. “What?”

“For a doctor, you sure don’t take good care of yourself. Look, see? You got that wrapping going against the grain of your feathers. It’s putting all kinds of pressure on the calamus. They’ll snap off if you keep that up.”

“...’Calamus,’ huh?”

Klinger rolls his eyes. “What, you think just ‘cos the only birds we got in Toledo are those mangy mourning doves that I don’t know fowl? I got family who started up a whole business for carrier pigeons. Who do you think they made do all the research about the care and feeding of the things? Me, ‘cos I was the only guy in three blocks who hadn’t gotten himself barred from the library.”

Hawkeye blinks. “What did they do to get barred from the library?”

“You don’t wanna know. Here, give me that.” Klinger takes the bandages from Hawkeye’s unresisting fingers and untangles all the work that he’d already done. “Of course, if you really want to get the deluxe, expert treatment, Doc, you ought to be talking to Radar. Kid knows animal parts like I know poker.”

“Klinger, you’re awful at poker. All you do is cheat.”

“Says you. Bet you can’t prove it. Point is, I get that you want to keep this-- _whatever_ this is--a secret. But you’d be a lot better off if you let me pull O’Reilly in on the scheme.”

“What ‘scheme’? There’s no scheme. It’s just _private_. You do understand privacy, right? It’s not a foreign concept to you, is it?”

“You’re real cranky, Pierce. I’m just trying to help.”

Hawkeye sighs and rubs his now free hands over his face. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Guess I woke up on the wrong side of the war this year. You’re right. I don’t know how to take care of these things, and they obviously need more help than BJ and I can--.”

“Of course _Hunnicutt_ knows,” Klinger mutters. Hawkeye ignores him.

“ _\--Ok_. You’re right. Go get Radar.”

Klinger nods in satisfaction and throws off a picture-perfect salute. “Good choice. I’ll be right back.”

\--

“Wow, gee,” Radar says, for the sixth time. Hawkeye has been counting. “Just...wow. Gee, sir.” 

“Do me a favor, kid,” Klinger says, giving Radar a bracing pat on the back. “Throw in a ‘golly’ or a ‘holy moley’ in there just for variety, huh?”

Radar throws him a dark look and then immediately turns his attention back to Hawkeye’s feet. “Aw, w--golly, Captain. I don’t wanna hurt ya, but if I do anything with ‘em, it’s going to hurt. Sorry.”

Hawkeye waves him off. “It’s fine, Radar. They hurt most of the time, anyway. A little extra pain isn’t going to make much difference. The important thing is if you can actually do anything to fix them. Can you?”

Radar frowns in thought and reaches forward, gently lifting one of the less-battered of Hawkeye’s wings from the surface of the crate. Against the thin flesh under the sparse feathers, his hands feel warm and a touch sweaty. With great care, the boy runs his stubby fingers over the bent feathers and irritated skin. “Real puny muscles, huh?” he asks, to the room at large. Hawkeye is viscerally reminded of BJ’s tendency to mutter such thoughts to himself during pre-op diagnosis. 

Hawkeye hazards an answer, anyway, despite the rhetorical nature of the question. “Atrophied. They aren’t very active, out here.”

Klinger, a bit more savvy to Hawkeye’s too-casual tone than his companion, narrows his eyes. “‘Out here?’” he asks, suspiciously. 

Hawkeye just shrugs helplessly and remains stubbornly silent on the matter. His cat is out of the bag, sure, but he’d like to at least keep the tail end in the rucksack as long as possible. Some details are on a strictly need-to-know basis and, as of the moment, neither Klinger nor Radar need to know them.

Radar hums in response and lets the wing lie. He moves toward the bent, broken one and hesitates, looking up at Hawkeye in question.

Hawkeye puts his hands on the edge of the table and gets a good, solid grip on the wood. “All right, Radar. Do your worst.”

Grimacing, Radar picks up the broken appendage and carefully follows the line of the break with his fingertips while Hawkeye goes tense as steel and does his level best not to squirm. “Oh, wow. G--gosh, sir, this is in real bad shape. I think it’s shattered.”

Hawkeye manages a jerky nod. “The radius is. Took x-rays,” he grits out.

“Oh, wow.” Radar swallows heavily, gently laying the wing down to rest again. “That’s going to be hard to fix. It might have to, uhm, be reset?” His voice raises up high in question at the end.

“Uh, Radar, the way you just said that doesn’t inspire confidence. What’s with the high octave?”

“Well, it’s just, I’ve never done anything like that with a wing. I’ve fixed a couple-a broken ones before, but they weren’t nearly so bad. All you gotta do then is what you’ve been doing. You wrap it up close to the bird’s body and let it knit itself up. But, I don’t know, sir. If that bone is broken in so many places, and if it’s been busted for a long time….”

Hawkeye tries not to feel too disappointed. He knew going in that it was a long shot. Even if wrapping the appengenge up and leaving it alone to properly heal was an option--which it emphatically is not--the wing would never regain its old strength or mobility. 

“Well, thanks for the house call anyway, Radar. I appreciate it.”

Radar shrugs in obvious embarrassment. “It’s just like taking care of chickens at the farm, sir. No trouble.”

Hawkeye, despite himself, huffs a laugh. 

\--

His is the worst kept secret in camp. Within days of Klinger’s stumbling on the truth, Hawkeye finds himself on the receiving end of barely-smothered whispers and pointed stares. He ignores it to the best of his ability. He knows how the rumor mill around this place works; eventually everyone will talk the story up to such big, impossible heights that no one in their right mind could possibly believe it. If he just stays low and quiet, it will burn itself out. 

This is what he tells himself the first time Nurse Baker corners him in the supply tent and asks, in her most sultry tone, if he’ll let her see his feet.

He claims sudden onset dysentery and flees to the Swamp. 

“Like vultures!” he yells at BJ, who half-listens while rolling up one of Hawkeye’s yarn balls. Hawkeye paces, shoulders up near his ears, hands gesticulating wildly. “There’s a pack of them everywhere I turn, pointing and _whispering_ and asking questions that I just--What am I going to do?”

“You shouldn’t have told Klinger and Radar the truth,” BJ says, not for the first time. 

“Hey, listen. I know your knowledge of Greek deities is spotty at best, but time travel? Not one of my many amazing skills. What’s done is done, and I can’t fix it. Don’t you have any advice that’s actually useful?”

BJ’s eyes flicker past Hawkeye to the mesh wall of the tent, on the other side of which several corpsmen hover in a most suspicious manner. “Sure. Stop yelling about what a fantastic god you are for all and sundry to hear, for starters.”

Hawkeye throws his pillow at the man. “Traitor.”

BJ dodges the pillow and shows no sign of giving it back. “So they know some things. They don’t know what they know, right? Just keep your shirt on. Or your socks, in this case.”

Hawkeye flops down onto his cot, covers his face with his hands, and groans.

It’s almost a relief when Colonel Potter calls him up to his office. Standing outside the two large, imposing doors, Hawkeye takes a deep breath and enters with his usual bluster and misplaced bravado. “Hello, Colonel. Fancy seeing you here.”

Potter looks up from the files on his desk with an unamused air. “Sit down, Pierce,” he orders, and Hawkeye obliges the man by strolling over--cool as a cucumber, if he does say so himself--and parking it. Hawkeye doesn’t have a joke on hand in that moment. He just sits down in silence, twitchy and bordering on sullen, certain that he’s about to find himself shipped out of Korea or something worse. Will the military take him away in an unmarked van to some secret lab for dissection? Perhaps to the same underground location those aliens found in Roswell ended up. 

“Lot of weird things to be seen in this man’s Army,” Potter says, flicking idly through the stack of papers before him, keeping his gaze on the paperwork and not on Hawkeye at all. “Lots of stories to be told there, too. Had a CO once used to delight in telling those tall tales around a roaring fire, like we were a Boy Scout troop. You know which one of those whoppers was my favorite?”

Hawkeye barely resists the urge to fidget with the tie of his robe. He maybe should have ditched the offending item of clothing and come in proper fatigues. This meeting has an air of severity that, despite his fears, he had not truly anticipated. “No, what?” “My CO knew a lot of folklore, and my favorites were about Old Man and his wife, Old Woman. There’s this story about the nature of death and why it is when folks snuff it, they die forever. Goes like this, as I remember it: Old Man says to his wife ‘humans should never die.’ But Old Woman says, ‘No, they have to die, or else there will be too many people and the world will fill up.’ So Old Man says ‘All right. People will die, but only for a little while, and then they’ll come back to life again.’ But his wife says ‘No, people must die forever so that they will learn to love and cherish each other while they are alive.’ So Old Man says ‘We have to make a decision. Let’s throw a buffalo chip into the lake. If it sinks, we’ll do it your way and people will die forever. If it floats, people will die and live again.’ And Old Man thought he was real clever, right then, ‘cos he knew that buffalo chips always rise to the top of the water. Old Woman agreed with his plan, and they threw the dung in. But Old Woman wasn’t without her ways, either, and she had the magic to change things into other things at will. When the buffalo chip hit the water, she turned it into a stone. It sank to the bottom of the lake, and now when humans die, we die forever.”

It’s not the most ridiculous story about the origin of death that Hawkeye has ever heard. He could tell the Colonel a doozy about a young lady named Pandora and her little Box of Doom, for example. Still, Hawkeye just stares at the other man in clear confusion. “I don’t think I understand the moral to this story, Colonel. Maybe you could tell it to me again, but with more gin?”

Potter huffs a laugh and, to Hawkeye’s surprise, actually reaches into a bottom drawer of his desk and pulls forth a glass and a small bottle of liquor. “If that’s what it takes to get some truth out of you, Pierce, then you can wet your whistle all you like. Comes down to this, son. I’m hearing a lot of strange stories around this camp that would put my old CO’s fairytales to shame. Now, I don’t see much harm in the odd bizarre rumor or two circulating around my camp. The trouble is when those rumors start to spread further, out past our borders where we can’t control who hears ‘em. And what I want to know is this: Should I prepared for some trouble, when that happens, or not?”

Hawkeye pours himself and the Colonel both a belt and swallows his in one shot before meeting the seemingly older man’s steady gaze. “In my long experience, knowing the truth only causes more problems for the one who hears it. Are you sure you want to know?”

“Forewarned is forearmed, Pierce. I’m in command of this camp, and I take that role pretty damn seriously. Spill it.”

And so, heaving a great sigh, Hawkeye leans over and tugs off his socks one-by-one and throws his feet up on the top of Colonel Potter’s cluttered desk, careful of the hooch. He takes some perverse delight in watching the man’s dark eyes go wide in pure astonishment.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the Colonel whispers, drowning the rest of his words in another long swallow from his glass.

“Not with me around, you won’t,” Hawkeye promises airily. He makes a soft ‘tsk’ sound and draws his foot back as Potter approaches with outstretched fingers. “If you don’t mind, Colonel, I’d prefer that you look with your eyes and not your hands. As you can probably tell, these pinions have seen better days. No offense to your professional pride, but the only persons cleared for contact are my acting physician--that’s BJ--and my local veterinarian--that’s Radar.”

Potter makes a soft sound of agreement and pulls his hands back. “Looks mighty painful. How are you handling it?”

One thing Hawkeye has come to appreciate most about the folks of the 4077th, they never fail to put the proper care of others over all other concerns. Potter’s initial surprise has been wiped almost entirely away under the force of his doctorly interest.

“Well enough. Radar’s got some good ideas about splinting up the break as long as I’m extra careful when I wrap them up, and BJ has me on low-grade painkillers when I need them. Nothing that would affect my ability to do my job, though. I’m clear-headed.”

“Of course,” Potter says, with a nod. He knows that Hawkeye is always careful to avoid operating under the influence. The man has done his fair share of doctoring while sporting a massive hangover or two, certainly, but he doesn’t drink and dissect. 

“You really think someone might come here to sniff me out?” Hawkeye asks, after he’s pulled his feet off the desk and his socks back onto his feet.

“Hard to say. It _is_ an awful tall tale. I wouldn’t have bought it myself if you hadn’t put the evidence right in front of me. And even then I’m still waiting for one of you other yahoos to jump out and yell ‘gotcha!’ at me.”

Hawkeye grins. “I _told_ BJ that it’d be a hell of a good prank, if it weren’t the gods’ honest truth.”

“Let’s assume for now that we’re in the clear. And if anyone does come to ‘sniff you out,’ like you say, well. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, Pierce, as much as I hate to say it, having seen the state of the poor things, you gotta continue keeping those puppies under wraps. Keep up with the deflections and all, too. I want this weird rumor to stay unverified, capiche?”

“Clear as crystal, Colonel,” Hawkeye says, standing to go on his way back to work.

“Pierce.”

Hawkeye turns, expectant. He frowns at the expression on Potter’s face, unable to quite place it. It isn’t until later, thinking on it, that he recognizes the tight lips and wet eyes as a look of awe, of the sort of human wonder that Hermes has not seen for longer than he can reckon. The visitors to his meager temples--the travelers and thieves and lost souls--used to look at him just like that, back in the day. Oddly, he has not missed it.

“Thank you. For what you’ve been doing here.”

Hawkeye offers the old man a wry smile. “Allegedly, you mean.”

Potter snorts, the odd expression dissolving into his more familiar air of tolerant humor. “Yeah. Just try to keep your nose clean, all right, son? You’ll save me at least a dozen ulcers if you can manage just that much.”

Hawkeye rubs self-consciously at said appengenge as if checking it for literal dirt. “I’ll do my best, sir. I promise.”

He can’t offer the mortal man much more reassurance than that. 

\--

Hawkeye returns to the world of the living with a terrible, guts-churning lurch. He falls to the ground and crawls forward a few feet, retching dryly into the frost-covered ground. He holds himself up with one hand and presses the other tightly to his abdomen as it churns and grinds--feeling full of broken shards of glass. 

He can’t stop thinking about the look in the dead soldier’s eyes as Hawkeye had pressed his hands firmly against the ghost’s shoulders and _pushed_ him into the blazing red light of his damnation. Hawkeye couldn’t see what lay beyond the glow, couldn't hear it, but experiencing the sight and sounds secondhand in the soldier’s silent screeching, the way he flailed desperately for purchase with all his limbs, _begging_ Hawkeye to let him go, to let him escape the torment waiting for him--well, that was more than enough for Hawkeye’s imagination. Hawkeye barely had the physical strength to fight the dead man, but he had not dared to give up or give in. He’d held firm, an immovable wall between the dead man and the promise of freedom from his eternal torment. Finally, after what seemed eons of struggle, Hawkeye’s problem had been solved by an external foice--something from the _other side_ of the doorway had grabbed ahold of the dead man’s legs and pulled him, slick as butter, through the gap. It had happened with so little fanfare as to almost be comical. Almost. Eyes closed, now, Hawkeye can still see the twisted, frantic agony on the dead man’s face as he’d disappeared into that bright, burning light. 

Now, returned to reality, Hawkeye retches again, choking on bile and air. And something wet. Coppery. Blood.

He shivers uncontrollably from more than just the pervasive, bitter chill of the night. He hasn’t failed a soul so utterly in a long time. Perhaps never. The guilt is like knives all through him--or maybe that’s actual pain. He isn’t sure, anymore.

“Pierce? What in the devil are you--?”

Hawkeye chokes wetly, nose nearly touching the soiled dirt with the force of his heaving. He hears a wet sound of liquid hitting the mud and coughs as copper coats his throat. He’s vomiting blood, he knows, but there’s also warm liquid trailing down over his upper lip. A nose bleed, too? He blinks a haze of shadows from his eyes. His vision is spotted. His head pounds in time with his pulse, which seems unable to find a rhythm and stick to it. The brutalized skin along his back burns and aches, rubbed uncomfortably against his jacket every time he heaves.

“Dear _God above_. All right. It’s all right. Steady on, man.” 

Hawkeye jerks reflexively away from the incoming touch, expecting a new assault, a fresh attack. The demons have eyes of fire and wide-hinging jaws full of vicious, needle-like teeth. Their claws are knife blades, straight and sharp--they cut through skin as if it is nothing but air. They can shred down to the bone and leave nothing but ribbons behind. The demons smell of sulfur and, unlike the dead, he can hear and understand every foul, vicious, accusatory word that falls from their gruesome lips. 

“No, please,” he moans. “No more, please.” He coughs, retching again, too weak to fight as the claws come at him, as he is wrapped up in the shadows. He expects pressure, to be squeezed into splinters and paste again, but nothing of the sort occurs at all. Instead, strong hands grip his arms, hold him upright and steady to keep his face out of the muck. 

He hears noise. Yelling. He hasn’t heard such yelling in years. Oh, the dead man had screamed himself hoarse, he’s sure. But he never heard it. Now, someone human raises their voice and screams, a note of hysteria in it, pure panic. A cry for help, repeated.

Footsteps. Running. An attack, after all. Hawkeye pushes the monster that is on his back away, scrambles to his feet, one arm wrapping itself very tightly around the broken glass of his guts. He puts out his other hand in a useless gesture of defense, backing away from the hoard of monsters as they approach. “Don’t,” he says. It’s a stupid thing to say, but he has nothing else. “I’ll kill you,” he adds, going for threatening, missing the mark by a mile. He’s killed many demons over the recent years, sure, but usually through nothing but good timing and sheer luck. He’s outnumbered, now, and wounded, besides. 

One of the monsters breaks from the pack and approaches. Hawkeye’s back bumps up against something solid. He puts his hands to it, feels about. A wall. Wood planks. Not very sturdy. Strange. Nothing on the dead man’s path was like this. It was all fire, shadows, pools of lava and porous rock--an unimaginative man’s perception of the road to Hell. 

“Please,” Hawkeye says, literally cornered. He looks wildly around, trying to find something, anything he might use to keep the demon and its fellows at bay. “What are you doing?” he shouts at it, terrified by how slowly it approaches, how silently. No. Not silently. It’s growling. Speaking. He prepares himself for the usual cutting insults, the constant barrage of hate.

“Hawkeye, it’s okay. It’s me. It’s BJ, Hawkeye. Are you listening to me? Wherever you think you are right now, you’re not. You’re in the camp. Outside the officer’s club. We just finished a game of poker about half an hour ago, and you went to get some air. Remember?”

He does. He does remember. The memory is hazy, dimmed by the passage of time. Time on the pathways is not consistent or exactly linear, but it does _pass_. It took him so long to get the dead man to his light. The ghost kept running and hiding himself away. Hawkeye had spent weeks searching, playing a morbid and dangerous game of hide-and-seek. Months trying to help him, to absolve him of his many, many sins, to destroy the monsters the man had made for himself in his soul. The monsters that Hawkeye fears now. The demons who took Hawkeye off the path, who kept him in their lair and pulled him into pieces, strip by strip by--. 

Hawkeye sinks to the ground, his fingernails catching and dragging against the wood grain of the wall as he retches anew. The smell of blood is thick in the air. 

“We don’t have time to do this gently, Hunnicutt. Either grab him or let someone else have a go.”

“Just--give me a second, Colonel. Just a second.”

Hawkeye groans, peering out from bleary eyes. He can see, now, that the demons are not demons at all but familiar men and women. Charles, who found him in the mud. BJ, who currently approaches. The Colonel and Klinger and several white-faced nurses lingering behind, ready to assist. 

“Beej?” Hawkeye croaks. 

“That’s right, Hawk. It’s okay. You’re home.”

“Home,” Hawkeye repeats. He closes his eyes, savors the concept. _Home_.

“You’re in a bad way, Hawkeye. I want to take you to the OR. Can I do that? We have a litter for you right here.”

“Okay,” Hawkeye agrees. “Beej? Busted up. Inside.”

“I know, Hawk.”

“My back, too. S’bad.”

“Okay. We’ll check all of you out, I promise. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands.”

Hawkeye smiles at him. “I know.”

“Klinger, help me. That’s it. Easy, easy. Turn him on his side a little, he might need to vomit again and we don’t want him to choke.”

Hawkeye surrenders to what feels like a dozen pair of hands. They pull him onto a stretcher and carry him away. He fades into darkness--a more comforting one than what he has come to know by far--and is aware of nothing else, except, faintly, a familiar, priggish voice saying:

“Don’t fret, Pierce. I’m a genius with internal trauma, you know. You’re going to be fine.”

\--

Claws, talons, had set upon him, methodical in their attentions, as if the demons were themselves surgeons of a type. They hadn’t been like the tiger, lashing out mindlessly, desperate only to hurt. No, they had _ideas_. The personified sins of a dead soldier had stretched Hawkeye out on a rack and torn into his body with _intention_. They laughed as they worked. They had told jokes, a bitter parody of Hawkeye and his fellow doctors passing lines in the OR. They called him a canvas and referred to themselves as artists. They described their butchery as helping to bring into life a grand and masterful design, like Michelangelo's angel trapped in her marble slab. 

Caduceus. The image of his staff, the symbol of his affinity for healing, a representation of his desire to mend what is beyond fixing. Its cylindrical shape scores deep in the flesh bracketing his spine, the bodies of the intertwining snakes arching up, their heads carved over his latissimus dorsi, facing the body of the rod. The rounded head of the staff rests just at the base of his neck, the deep cuts far too close to his spinal cord for Hawkeye’s comfort. They had carved the spread wings of the staff with absolute precision, each brand of every feather rendered crisp and clear. They stretch over his shoulder blades, the tips of the primaries just meeting the edge of his deltoids. It _is_ a master work, a piece of art. It is his body branded clearly, a glaring testament to his failures, each laceration a punishment given and received for the ones who are dead--and, most of all, for the one soul he has failed so utterly to save, for the dead man who even now resides in a Hell of his own making, an eternal torment into which Hawkeye himself had thrown him without remorse.

\--

In post-op, deep under the thrall of the anaesthetic, he dreams.

Ares, god of war, sits upon a throne of skulls and discarded bullet casings, sucking the marrow from small, fragile bones that look suspiciously like Hawkeye’s freshly plucked ankle wings.

Hawkeye walks toward the throne on bloodied feet, the skin of his soles so ragged and torn that it hardly looks like flesh at all. His doctor’s eye recognizes gangrene when he sees it, but there is no time to cut the dead flesh away.

Between Hawkeye and the throne is a path, similar to the pathways of the dead that he so often has walked. Hawkeye has an irrational fear that this terrible, blood-soaked place might be the path of his own soul laid bare. Has he died? Is _his_ final destination not a welcoming light but, instead, the open arms of War?

His stomach aches terribly. He presses his fists against the center of the pain and his knuckles pass straight through, into the open wound. His fingers skitter over a big, open hole where his organs ought to be. He is hollow inside, emptied out. 

In the sky, there are vultures. They are five times as large as any carrion bird Hawkeye has ever seen. 

When he blinks, the surroundings change, and he finds himself strapped down to a large, sun-warmed rock. The ropes that bind him are woven of sterile medical gauze, glaringly white in the burning glow of the blood-red sun. He tugs at them to no avail. Above, the vultures circle. They fall upon him, hungry for his insides. Upon finding nothing there on which to feast, the birds complain in piercing shrieks. Hawkeye screams, too, as they descend upon his torn feet, instead, eating away the dead and rotting skin. From above on his throne, Ares laughs, his once-known face lost now in shadows, a complete mystery.

\--

Hawkeye’s waking fear is that they’ll ship him off to Tokyo General and then on to the place he calls his home but has never been to. He grabs drunkenly--he’s on strong painkillers, loopy but thankfully numb--at a passing white jacket, tugging. 

“Don’t send me home,” he says. “Please, don’t send me home.”

“Easy, Hawk,” BJ soothes. He sits down the edge of Hawkeye’s bed, pushes against his shoulder until Hawkeye lies back flat again. “No decisions have been made, yet.”

“Don’t let them. I don’t live there,” Hawkeye says, or more accurately slurs.

“I know,” BJ replies. He checks Hawkeye’s pulse. Puts his stethoscope to Hawkeye’s chest, prods his bandaged torso. He reaches up and double checks the bottle of blood attached to Hawkeye’s IV.

“How much have I had?” Hawkeye asks, squinting up at the glass bottle.

“Plenty. Charles went in and fixed the broken vessels, though. No complications and no new bleeds. I think you’re in the clear.”

Hawkeye should feel comforted or relieved by that good news, but he just feels tired and...and guilty. He pushes his emotions aside, focuses on doctor-patient analysis. “My back?”

BJ’s expression shutters from peaceable bedside manners to badly concealed rage. “We stitched up everything with enough skin left on it to mend. We’ll be checking the area for infection every few hours.”

“Gonna scar, huh?”

“Yeah, Hawk. Sorry. I did what I could, there.”

Hawkeye tilts his head in a pseudo-shrug. “I appreciate the sutures. I know how good a tailor you are, Beej. I’m not worried.”

“What happened?” BJ presses, lowering his voice. “You went to take that DOA patient...where he needed to go. I know that much. Why did you come back like this? Tigers, again?”

Hawkeye blinks a few times. He’s struggling to stay awake. He’s very thankful for modern drugs. “He did...something bad. He had a guilty conscience. It had teeth,” he explains, weakly. “I couldn’t--I didn’t save him.”

BJ winces and reaches out, grips Hawkeye’s hand in a gesture of solidarity. “I’m sure you did your best.”

Hawkeye tells the dead a variation on that theme all the time. He knows they’re just hollow words. Words one uses to convince those in the wrong that they have nothing to feel bad about, even though they do. 

“His _path_ was hell itself; his actual Hell will be even worse,” Hawkeye says, or whispers, or maybe just thinks to himself. 

“Get some rest. We can talk more later.”

“Don’t let...send home,” Hawkeye reminds him.

“I’ll do what I can,” BJ promises, and Hawkeye drifts into a blissfully dreamless sleep. 

\-- 

When he wakes, someone is speaking at his elbow in a language he doesn’t know. Hawkeye swallows thickly--his mouth is as dry as the Sahara--and cracks open one eye. He follows a sleek black sleeve up to the glimmer of a large silver cross. No white collar, today. Father Mulcahy is in his more casual gear. And the language he is speaking is Latin.

“Last rites, Father?” Hawkeye interrupts. “I’m always the last to know the important things.”

The priest cuts off mid phrase and offers one of his nervous chuckles. “Oh, no, Hawkeye. I’m sorry to wake you, my son. I was just catching up on some prayers.”

“Well, you’re always welcome to pray at my bedside, Father, although I thought that was typically something one tended to do while kneeling at their own.”

Mulcahy blushes slightly. Hawkeye always tries very hard not to flirt too much with the poor man. It’s not as fun as it might seem to wind him up. All the same, Hawkeye finds the strict rules of celibacy imposed upon Catholic priests to be a terrible shame. Back in Hawkeye’s glory days, his own temple priests were decidedly more liberated. He oftens muses on the idea of convincing the young man to convert, just for a night or two. Hawkeye would give the priest right back to his capital-G god when he was finished--better than new, if Hawkeye has any say in the matter.

“Ah, Hawkeye. Are you listening to me?”

“No. Sorry, Father. I think I just got a fresh dose of opiates a bit ago. I’m a little loopy. I didn’t say any of that out loud, did I?”

“Any of what?”

“Good. Nevermind. What can I do for you, Father? Why are you here?”

“If I’m bothering you, I can--.”

“Stay. Stay. Just...let the cat out of the bag already, huh? I don’t want to get scratched.”

Mulcahy takes a deep breath and lets it out again. “I’ve been asked by Colonel Potter to speak with you, Hawkeye.”

“Ah, this is about my discharge papers.”

“Yes. Now, the Colonel doesn’t wish to force your hand--.”

“No, of course not.”

“--But he does feel that perhaps you might need an ear to bend on the matter, as it were. In order to be really sure that you’re making the best decision.”

“You know, everyone really wants me out of this place. I’m starting to feel offended. I thought we were all friends.” Hawkeye says it like a joke, but the priest’s expression becomes shrewd, accessing.

“You are one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met, and I know I’m not alone in that belief. That said, Hawkeye--what happened to you--.”

Hawkeye’s fingers curl, fisting into the blankets. In his official record, they’ve claimed him as a victim of a random physical assault by an unknown party, most likely from the enemy side, though for a few days there it was all Hawkeye could do to keep the Colonel from demanding a full-scale, camp-wide witch-hunt for his ‘attacker’. Hawkeye wishes he could really explain. He’s not the victim of an attack. He _is_ a newly freed prisoner of war with a few relative years of captivity and torture behind him. It’s just that his captors _weren’t ‘_ the enemy,’ in the strictest sense, because they weren’t Communists. Or _human_ at all. Or _real._

 

“It was...unpleasant,” Hawkeye interrupts in a carefully modulated tone. “And it’s true I’m going to be out of commission for a while. But I don’t need to go to another hospital, and I certainly don’t need to be invalided back home. In a week or two I’ll be back on my feet again, ready for the OR. I wish everyone would just listen to me. I’m a doctor, you know. I know what’s best for me, my patient.”

Mulcahy smiles ruefully. “I believe BJ is actually your doctor of record.”

“Well that settles it, then, because BJ thinks I should stay, too.” Mulcahy sighs softly. “BJ is your friend. In the end, I believe he will do what is best for you.”

“What’s best for me, Father, is staying here.” _With my family._

The young priest smiles and, very obviously, changes the subject. “So, Hawkeye. I received a letter this morning from my sister, and I haven’t yet had a chance to read it. Would you mind?”

Hawkeye, who is loath to let the subject of his uncertain future lie but also quite enjoys Sister Mary Frances’s pure moxie, just nods and allows the man to read his letter from home aloud.

\--

A man dies in the middle of the night. Hawkeye wakes up to the sound of his final, rattling breath. Hawkeye double checks to make sure the on-duty nurse is absent and slips out of his bed. He’s glad that his IV doesn’t need to follow him into the light. He has no desire to lug this borrowed blood behind him all the way to the soldier’s salvation.

“Huh, for once I’m already not wearing shoes,” Hawkeye muses, hazily. Somehow--with BJ’s helpful meddling, he’s sure--Hawkeye’s managed to keep socks on his feet since his admittance. He’s heard the rumor mill’s churning. He knows that his wings are an open secret, that his very nature has been in question around the compound for months. War makes even the most skeptical of humans believe in the strange and unlikely. Even Charles might be buying into the steadily growing tall tales, by now. He appreciates BJ’s discretion all the same.

Hawkeye holds up a finger to the dead man and takes a moment to peel off his drab olive socks, letting the wings free for the first time in many days. He stretches them out and sighs at the pleasure-pain feeling of it. 

“Sorry for the wait,” Hawkeye tells the ghost in a whisper. He hobbles forward a few steps, an arm tight around his torso. “I’m not moving at my best right now. I hope you’ve led a good life, kid.”

The ghost looks back at him with some confusion. He speaks. Hawkeye doesn’t bother to tell him it’s no use. He’s too tired to go through the usual steps. Even the knowledge that this will likely be his final crossing for a while doesn’t help ease his apathy toward the task. There is no joy to be found in his vocation, these days--not after the horrors he has seen and the unforgivable thing that he has done. He turns to the open gash in the world as it appears in the middle of post-op.

“Right on time. Okay, Private. Hold still.” Hawkeye rests his chin on the kid’s shoulder and plucks the threads. 

Hawkeye gasps, grabs at the kid’s arms to steady himself as his senses are overwhelmed with input, with feelings, with memories. With sights and noise and _there’s so much_. His parents immigrated to the states long before he was born. They came from Patras. In--oh, _oh_ \--in _Greece_. He’s born in his childhood home, a too-small apartment in New York City. He has three sisters and three brothers and he’s smack dab in the middle. He paints. He’s made art since he could hold a pencil, has seen the world in shapes and colors all his life. The room he shares with his brothers is covered floor to ceiling in his work, hung up with thumbtacks, blowing sometimes in the summer breeze through their tiny window. His youngest sister is his best friend. She plays piano and loves butterflies and wants to be a nurse. Their mother plays the violin. His eldest brother has--had, had, he died in the first year of the war, oh, gods, the grief is too much--the voice of an angel. Their home is music, their home is color, their home is laughter and poverty and so, so much love that it fills up the hollow spaces in Hawkeye’s chest, leaves him teary-eyed and smiling so hard with borrowed joy that his cheeks hurt. More than anything, more than anything in the whole world, the dead boy wishes he could go home, just once more, just one time more, and feel the touch of his family’s love. 

Hawkeye, head spinning, curses in Greek. The boy looks at him with startled recognition at the phrase and laughs in silent delight. Hawkeye takes a moment to compose himself, swallowing hard and rubbing at the wetness collecting in the corner of his eyes. He lets go of the boy’s arms and steps back. 

“You’re done here,” he tells him, sounding choked around the happy-sad tears. “You have to leave them behind. Just for a little while.”

The ghost nods his understanding, his acceptance. He’s so young. 

“Do you know who I am?” Hawkeye asks. He’s never asked before. In the old days, it was unnecessary. In the new days, it is futile. But this boy’s people come from the homeland that Hawkeye barely remembers, and he might still know the names of the old gods by heart. 

The dead boy smiles, nods. He crouches low suddenly and, to Hawkeye’s surprise, studies the wings rising up from his ankles. He tilts his head just so, mimicking the shape with his hand in the air. Ah, an artist’s attention to the details. If he had a notebook in hand, Hawkeye suspects he’d be drafting a few sketches of the bent feathers. 

“They’ve, uh, seen better days,” Hawkeye says, suddenly self-conscious of them. 

The kid reaches out and brushes his fingertips against the unkempt feathers, the badly-healed break. He looks up and says something.

“I can’t hear you,” Hawkeye sighs. “I’m sorry.”

The kid frowns and then shrugs it off. He stands upright again and gestures toward the light in a ‘there?’ gesture. Hawkeye nods and leads the way.

Hawkeye takes a deep breath through his nose as they appear on the other side of the light. Warm, clear air with a hint of something familiar in it--the scent of freshly baked bread and olive tapenade. A homey smell for the dead boy, Hawkeye is sure. 

The path is made of red clay bricks, aged but whole and smooth. On either side of it are tall, tall buildings of steel and glass, towering higher than any real structure could. Every now and again, Hawkeye spots a tree growing in the alleys, just a bit of vibrant green in a highly industrial world. He can glimpse the vibrancy of a red-and-white awning up ahead and the glowing bulbs of several tall, black lampposts, all of them wound around with delicate sprigs of flowering ivy, a splash of purple and blue against the dark metal. Hawkeye smiles. It’s the best of many worlds, perfectly arranged as if painted on a page. 

“Good for you, kid,” Hawkeye praises. “This is real nice. Looks a bit like your home turf, I bet.”

The dead boy is smiling, too, eyes bright with recognition and excitement. He points ahead, lips in motion. 

“Gotta go toward the light,” Hawkeye agrees. “But, hey, let’s take our time. This is the most pleasant stroll I’ve had in awhile. Besides, the party won’t start without you, over there.”

The kid nods his agreement and sticks his hands in his pockets, affecting the posture of a man out for a summer stroll in the park. Hawkeye walks in step with him, but he doesn’t hover. He can tell already there is nothing here to fear, nothing from which the boy needs to be protected. He’s led a short but happy life. No regrets, no mistakes, no sins that trouble his mind. Even the war hasn’t touched this place. It could never. He’s fortified it well, wrapped himself up in the protection of family, beauty, and home. Maybe, if he had lived longer, if he had experienced more, Hawkeye would have seen the familiar signs of wear and worry on this walk. But everything here is sunshine and incongruous flowers. It is a relief. 

“This is probably my last walk for a while,” Hawkeye says, after they’ve traveled in companionable silence several feet. “With these injuries, they’ll want to send me away from this place and all the death that’s in it.”

The kid glances over at him, an attentive if quiet audience. 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I came to Korea on a whim. I wanted to help. Primarily, I wanted to save lives. But I knew I could help save the dead, too. That’s not a skill that many possess, anymore. For all I know, I’m the only psychopomp--that’s a guide to the underworld; do they teach humans about those, anymore?--left in the modern world. Maybe the only one of my kind, period. I haven’t seen another god in generations.

“Before this, I worked as a medic during the The War to End All Wars. And the one that happened after it. They didn’t have much coordination in their field units, back then. I just ambled from one part of the front to the other. Changed my name and rank a few times as needed--you’d be amazed how simple it is to forge that kind of paperwork. All it takes is a word here, a signature there. Piece of cake. I did some good, I hope, back then. But I never made any real connections with the humans. It was...it was different than what I’ve built here. I’ve--I’ve been with this MASH unit since _day one_ , you know? I have friends--no, not friends. I have a family. A family full of weird uncles and a nosy but well meaning brother and an awkward nephew and some--some distant cousins I’ve known in the carnal sense, but, still. Family. It’s like being part of a pantheon, again. I didn’t know I missed that so much until I had it back. And now I might lose them all, too.”

Hawkeye trails off. He mimics the posture of the dead boy, sticks his hands in his pockets. He glances down to watch his feet on the bricks and, for the first time since his glory days, really studies his wings as they walk the path. They’re in constant motion, like a hummingbird in flight. It’s hard to be sure of the details when they’re nothing but an active blur, but Hawkeye suspects they are just as bedraggled here as they are in the living world. No wonder he aches so. No wonder he’s always so bruised and battered after a journey. It’s taking all he has to stay in this place, on this path, with the dead. He wonders if BJ is right. If maybe, eventually, at this grueling pace, his wings would simply tire out, if he would disconnect from the ground and find himself adrift and lost between planes of existence. Trapped in limbo. Worse, perhaps, than any man’s hell.

“I could go somewhere else in this war. Change my name, change my story. Maybe skip the doctoring and go right to the front. There’s more dead there than I could even comprehend. There’s whole armies of ghosts just wandering Korea, in fact, waiting for someone like me.” 

He won’t do that. Even he knows it’s too much to expect of his abilities, now. It would kill him, for lack of a better word to describe the complicated matter of his potential non-existence. He’s never wanted to prioritize the dead over the living, anyway. That’s why he’d passed himself off as a medic and then a doctor for so many years in so many wars. He wants to patch the mortals up, to keep their souls in _this_ world, where they can change and experience and grow. Guiding the ghosts to their rest was always an additional task, a necessary but unpleasant side-effect of trying to provide healing in the midst of great violence--sometimes you lose them, and then you must help them find their way again. It’s only fair.

“All right, so I couldn’t handle the guiding gig full time. But I could go to another MASH. Set up in a local hospital, maybe. Nobody would need to know. And if anyone died, I’d just...I’d just. Dammit. I’d help them. I’d help them. I wouldn’t be able to stand it, watching them drift from place to place, searching for doorways and never finding their way out. Gods, what am I going to do? It’ll be so much harder to keep this up without the support of my friends. One difficult journey--one more trip like the last one, especially--and I’d be--I’d be--well, you know what I’d be. I’d be dead. Destroyed, anyway. No more Hermes in the world. Gone, like my brothers before me--to wherever that might be. Do you think gods have paths to walk, when they’ve been worn out entirely? Do you think they have a light to cross through? Or do we just disappear, go to nothing, return to the void we came from?” 

The boy opens his mouth, about to speak his useless words, but Hawkeye waves him off. “It’s a rhetorical question, anyway, kid, don’t worry about it.”

Hawkeye rubs at his eyes. It’s a tic he’s picked up and can’t seem to drop, now. They always feel full of grit, since coming to Korea. “I could pack it all in. No more guiding, no more doctoring. I could just retire. Maybe actually go to Maine. It always sounds really nice when I tell people about it. You ever been to Maine?”

The dead boy shakes his head.

“Yeah. Neither have I. But that’s where I’m from, allegedly. That’s where they’ll want to send me. Crabapple Cove, Maine. A town that’s never even heard of Hawkeye Pierce. Could be nice.”

He and the boy walk for a while longer in silence.

“I’ll hate it,” Hawkeye admits with a sigh. The boy glances over at him, smiles sympathetically. “I will, I’ll hate it. I’d hate knowing the war’s still going on over here, without me. That men like you are dying in droves with one less surgeon to put them back to rights again. That the dead are piling up and no one can even see them, let alone take them where they have a right to go. Maine could be its own kind of paradise, but I’d hate every second of it. I’ll hate every second no matter where I end up. I can’t leave Korea. Not now. Not until this damn war is over.”

The boy looks at him, an eyebrow raised in question.

“Well, sure, I know that Korea won’t be the end of it. There’s always another fight. There’s usually more than one going on at once, even--it’s just that I can only be in one place at a time. I have no choice but to play favorites. I bet you the States will be drafting kids again in just a couple decades in some other useless bid for power or money or whatever. So, okay, I’d probably want to get involved in the next one, too. Maybe it never ends for me, now. Maybe this is just what I am, what I’ve become. Hermes, god of War.” Hawkeye’s shoulders slump under the weight of it. “Gods, what an awful thought _that_ is.”

The dead boy holds out his arm, stopping Hawkeye in his tracks. “Huh? What’s wrong?” Hawkeye blinks, realizing that they are inches from the threshold of the boy’s light. Hawkeye had almost walked right into it. He’s not sure what that would do to him, but it likely wouldn’t be a pleasant experience. “Oh. Thanks. Uh, well. This is your stop. Listen, sorry for talking your ear off. But I appreciate it. There’s not a lot of people I can confide in.”

The dead boy nods and claps Hawkeye’s shoulder a few times in a comradely manner. He turns toward his light and smiles at what he sees on the other side. Hawkeye barely resists the urge to grab at the kid as he steps forward, to hold him back for just a few minutes more, to bask in his friendly presence and the gentle, beautiful pathway of his soul. But Hawkeye refrains, and the light brightens, and he comes back to himself in post-op, standing awkwardly alone in the midst of the quiet beds full of sleeping soldiers. 

He considers telling the duty nurse about the body, but he’s worn out, and it will keep well enough until she notices the dead Greek boy on her own. 

He feels nauseated. 

Hawkeye eases himself back into his bed and folds his sore wings away, pulling his socks on once more. He then lies back and closes his eyes, though he doesn’t intend to sleep. He only has a limited time left here, in this place, with these people. He can’t spend it in their company, but at least he won’t dream it all away.

\--

When he wakes up--traitorous body!--he’s surrounded. He startles at first, panicked by the crowd, lost in another man’s hell for just a moment, but his sense returns soon enough and he recognizes the hungry mob as residual dreams. Only BJ stands near, staring down at him with a frown.

“What’s going on here? Is this a stick up?” Hawkeye asks, yawning widely. He feels sort of lightheaded (from lack of sleep?), and extremely queasy (for want of breakfast?). He tries to sit up and gasps, the world whiting out for the pain. 

BJ’s hands reach out to him, guiding him back against the pillows. He pulls up Hawkeye’s top as Hawkeye gulps in air. BJ probes at his torso with deft fingers.

“Does this hurt?” BJ asks mildly, pushing firmly at a spot near Hawkeye’s bellybutton.

“-- _Ow_ , holy _fucking_ Croesus!” Hawkeye bats at BJ’s hand, pulling bodily back from him. His mind skitters wildly and pounces on what has been plaguing him for days. “I have n-nowhere to go, BJ,” he stammers, arms wrapped protectively around himself, his eyes rather wild. “This is my _home_ , and-and-and I have nowhere to--.” 

“Easy, Hawk,” BJ says. “ _Easy_. Let go. Just let me see.”

Hawkeye allows the man to pry his arms away, to push him gently onto his back once more, to press against his flesh again. It _hurts_. He says so--yells it, really, in a high, strained voice--and tries to kick BJ away with his feet.

BJ grabs at one of his calves, tugging down the sock. He closes his eyes in--in what, disappointment? Pain?--at the sight that greets him. “Who died last night?” he asks, hollowly.

Hawkeye squints up at him. “A Private. Greek immigrant. Sweet kid. Good path. No trouble.”

“You’re bruised up.”

“Wings. I watched, this time. They look rough in there--never stop moving. It’s not s-surpising.” Hawkeye groans, curling in on himself, tugging his bared ankle from BJ’s lax fingers with the motion. “Ow, gods. What’s going on? I feel like my organs are reenacting The Great Escape.”

“I just said. You’re bruised. Not just your feet. You’re not cleared for that kind of physical strain, Hawkeye. I think you busted up Charles’s handiwork.”

Hawkeye laughs, choking on it. “Oh. Oh, well. I guess I just...bought myself some more time, here, after all.”

BJ calls out for help. It’s all a flurry of activity after that. Hawkeye, being lifted onto a litter, carried into OR once more. Someone wrangling Charles, the man’s arrival loud, full of bluster and complaints and--in a gesture that Hawkeye thinks he may have imagined in a pre-anesthesia inspired delusion--a weirdly tender moment in which Charles lays his hand on Hawkeye’s forehead and says, lowly, “Lucky for you, I can do even better the second time. Don’t worry.”

BJ takes on the role of gas-passer and Hawkeye rears back in knee-jerk alarm as the black mask descends. “No!” he shouts, fighting back, seeing threats where there are none. “No, stop! Leave me alone! Please!”

“It’s _okay_ , Hawk, just hold _still_!”

Hawkeye finds himself grabbed on all sides, held down by many hands. He shouts at them, curses them in Greek, finds himself transitioning from coarse profanities to fervent prayers. _Please, father, if you hear me, please don’t let them take me again. I am so afraid. I am so tired. Please, father, let it stop, please_.

“What on _earth_ is he saying? What’s his temperature? Is he delirious?”

“Shut up and work, Charles,” BJ says. “That’s it, Hawkeye. Just breathe it in. Atta boy. All right. He’s out. Pulse is steady. Temp is within acceptable range.”

“Good. Then let us examine the damage, shall we? Nurse, be ready with that clamp.”

“Colonel,” BJ says to Potter as Charles clips through his own battered sutures and delves back into the wound. “After this is done, you and I need to have a talk.”

\--

Fade in. “Take it easy, Hawk. Easy! Just give it a minute. Hold still. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.” Fade out.

Fade in. “Nurse, where the _hell_ is that sedative? Yes, thank you, finally! Honestly, the incompetence--!” Fade out.

Fade in. “Don’t get your stirrups in a tangle, Pierce. Just calm down, son. There you go. Atta boy.” Fade out. 

Fade in. “--never know what to say in these situations. Just...get back on your feet, soldier. That’s an order, not that that means anything to _you_.” Fade out. Fade in. “... _Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo_ ….” Fade out. 

Fade in. “So then I told that mealy-mouthed, pig-headed toady Rizo that if he’s gonna cheat at cards the least he could do is--.” Fade out. 

Fade in. “‘--second time this year. But don’t worry, Edna is back on her feed again and Doc Parsons’ oh, that’s the vet, Hawkeye, ‘Doc Parsons says that she’ll be right as a rainstorm come--.’” Fade out. 

Fade in. “Oh, no you don’t. This time you’re getting up and at ‘em. You stay in bed any longer, Hawk, you’re gonna meld with the mattress. That’s right. Wake up. Uh-huh, there you are. I can’t give you coffee, yet, but I’ve got a nice glass of lukewarm water with your name all over it.”

The effort to open his eyes is monumental. He should get a medal for it. He manages a half-squint, dazzled by the warm, natural light filtering into post-op. He swallows thickly several times and grimaces at the taste in his mouth--like all the food in the mess tent coating his tongue at once. 

“Beej?” he says, the syllable getting stuck in his throat, coming out brittle and crumbling.

“The one and only. In a second I’m gonna prop you up and make you drink this.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Hawkeye rasps. He looks around. All the other beds in post-op are empty. He hasn’t seen such a sight in a long while. Actually, the whole building looks decidedly bare. “Where’re the patients?”

“We’re bugging out. Chinese moved the front lines again. Final call is in an hour. The Colonel and I agreed that you’d be the last to load up, and it’d be better for you to be conscious for it. You can monitor your pain levels better than we can from the outside.”

“Oh,” Hawkeye says. His eyelids are drifting shut on him. He does feel an ache, now that BJ mentions it.

“Nuh-uh, my friend. You’re gonna stay awake and drink this water. You can sleep again when you get off the bus.”

“I don’t have a ticket,” Hawkeye retorts, hazily. 

BJ makes an agreeable, meaningless noise and loops his arm around Hawkeyes back, easing him up. The pressure against the slowly-healing scars on his back feels decidedly unpleasant--achy and itchy and, in some places, worryingly numb.

“Feels bad,” Hawkeye mumbles. BJ freezes. 

“Your back or your belly?”

“Back.”

“Then tough noodles. Sorry, Hawk.” BJ gets him mostly upright and puts the straw to Hawkeye’s lips. “Drink. Small sips. Slow.”

Hawkeye does as ordered. He’s really thirsty, but he doesn’t have the energy for big, healthy gulps. By the time the glass is empty, all of Hawkeye’s weight presses back on BJ’s arm and he has his eyes closed again, chin drifting toward his chest.

BJ slaps him. Lightly, gently, but it’s enough to make his eyes snap open in alarm. “Stay _awake_ , Hawkeye. Klinger! He’s ready to move!” BJ lays Hawkeye slowly onto his back again. He ghosts his fingers over Hawkeye’s abdomen as if he wants to get in a few final pokes and prods, but he refrains. “Listen, Hawk, I want you to keep talking to us while we load, all right? Margaret is going to ride in the back with you all the way, and you need to tell her how you’re feeling. I need to know if your pain spikes up, and those pot holes can be brutal. What’s it like right now?”

Hawkeye concentrates. “Aches. Like--like old bruises.”

“Good. That’s where you should be. You’re looking for stabbing pain, okay? Ground glass. Or maybe pressure, like something is sitting on your middle.”

Hawkeye frowns at him. “I know that. I’m a doctor.”

“You’re also only about half-conscious. I’m just reminding you. If you feel bad or strange, even a little, you need to tell me or Margaret. Okay?”

Hawkeye hums, eyes drifting. BJ taps his cheek repeatedly until he opens his eyes again.

“You’re the worst patient I’ve ever had,” BJ informs him, seriously. 

Hawkeye manages a weak smile. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” he retorts, just to see the guilty, proud expression on the other man’s face. He reaches up--oh, that’s difficult--and pats BJ’s cheek right back. “Thanks for looking out for me, stud.”

BJ laughs, a short huff of amusement. “Just lie back and think of--well, of Greece, I guess?”

Klinger comes bustling in, a hand on his head, trying to keep the floppy straw hat on it from flying off. “Here, sir! Sorry I’m late. There was a mixup with supply. The blood reserves almost got packed in with no ice. Problem fixed now, though. Hey! It’s Sleeping Ugly, awake at last. Nice to see those baby-blue eyes, sir, if you won’t make anything of it.”

Hawkeye grins as best he can. “Depends. I do like a man in a sundress. That new?”

“Hot off the sewing needle. Just for you, sir. Figured you’d want something cheerful to look at on your way into the bus.”

“Charmer.”

“If you two are finished?” BJ interjects, but there’s a smile hiding under his mustache. “Let’s go.”

Hawkeye groans as they lift him onto the litter. BJ’s face appears overhead immediately. “Hawk?”

“I’m ok. Just--jostled.”

BJ’s expression is dark with concern. “That was a pretty tiny bump. If you couldn’t handle that--.”

“--It’s ok. I’m fine. Keep-keep going.” He doesn’t want to be left. Moreover, he doesn’t want some poor sap--probably BJ--to volunteer to stay with him as the enemy pours in.

Things go more smoothly after that. BJ takes his head, Klinger his feet. BJ’s behind is right in Hawkeye’s face, but he refrains from commenting. Instead, he keeps his focus down, watching the gentle sway of the floral pattern on Klinger’s skirt. The man did make it just for him, after all. 

“Captain, he’s drifting,” Klinger says, sharply.

“So wake him up,” BJ says back, distracted.

“Oh, sure, sure. Leave all the hard work to me. Hey! Hawkeye! Pierce!”

Hawkeye opens his eyes. “Just five more minutes, mom.”

“Please. Your mother wishes she was me.”

“M’mother’s dead,” Hawkeye reminds him.

“Oh, right. Sorry, sir. Stay awake, huh? I can only put my foot in my mouth so many times and keep walking in a straight line. And the boss man up there says we gotta treat you like glass.”

“Beej?” Hawkeye calls. “Why? Is it really bad?”

“Margaret can fill you in later,” BJ says, tightly. Hawkeye can’t see much of what is going on around them, but he assumes it’s chaos. BJ, being the lead in their parade, is probably having to concentrate to keep his cargo safe.

“Okay,” Hawkeye says. In his mind, he starts to run through the long list of complications that can arise from trauma injuries to the internal organs. He remembers that he’d taken a bit of a walk with the dead Greek boy. He’d started to bleed, again, after he’d gotten back. Had there been infection? Vessels damaged beyond repair? He’s shocked, in either case, to still be in the 4077th. 

“BJ,” Hawkeye calls away, ignoring the way his friend sighs in irritation. “Why am I still here?”

“I can answer that one, sir,” Klinger replies, brightly. “The Colonel laid down the law just after you got out of the OR. No matter what happens, sir, you aren’t going anywhere. Oh, uh. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Pierce. But you’re going to have to wait ‘til the end of the war to get home, just like the rest of us. Colonel’s orders.”

Hawkeye blinks as he processes this. A grin slowly breaks across his face, causing his cheeks to ache. 

“Sir? You ok?” 

Hawkeye wants to dance, wants to throw back his head and holler for joy. He doesn’t have the strength. So he just reaches up, grazes his fingertips over BJ’s hands where they hold the litter. “Thank you,” he says, maybe too softly to be heard.

“Don’t thank me,” BJ grumbles as they step onto the bus. He has to turn around to better hold the litter. His face is grim. “I just told the Colonel the truth: You had just as much right as any man to die surrounded by the people you love the most, and those people are right here.”

Hawkeye’s eyebrows jump. “So it’s bad,” he says, blankly. He feels as stunned as only an assumed immortal being can be upon being faced with the limitations of his own existence. 

“It was in that moment, yeah,” BJ replies, stiffly. BJ and Klinger grunt in tandem as they lift Hawkeye’s litter up. BJ straps Hawkeye into his place in the bus and starts to move away. “Now? We’ll have to wait and see.”

Hawkeye reaches out and grabs for his friend’s retreating shoulder. He misses, but BJ sighs, turning to face him. BJ’s expression makes Hawkeye’s heart ache. 

“What?” BJ snaps. 

“Thank you. For everything you’ve done.”

BJ grimaces. “Don’t tell me goodbye.”

“Shouldn’t I, just in case?”

BJ shakes his head. “Don’t. Even if it comes to that, I don’t want it. Just say...just say you’ll see me soon.”

Hawkeye frowns at him thoughtfully. He’s not overly troubled by the prospect of his own death, honestly. Immortality has made him old, has made him tired. If he dies here, from this, he’ll die among people he has come to cherish, doing something that is important to him. It’s how many of the more patriotic wounded feel as well, he knows. Perhaps he really has become a soldier in his own right.

“Okay,” Hawkeye says, lying back. “See you later, alligator.”

BJ snorts softly. “After while, crocodile.”

\--

Margaret is a good person to have at your side in the midst of utter hell. Hawkeye wishes he could appreciate her properly in this, his own personal torment, instead of hating her guts--or his own guts, more accurately. Hawkeye bites off a scream as the bus rattles through another massive pothole in the road. He clings to Margaret’s offered hand so tightly he’s sure he’s going to shatter her bones.

“Breathe, Pierce,” she orders, in her bossiest Majorly tones. “I said _breathe_.”

He does. It’s a deep, noisy inhale that floods his whole body with agony. “ _Fuck_ ,” he whimpers. Margaret doesn’t so much as flinch. She usually nags him mercilessly about profanity in the OR, but Hawkeye supposes this is a special case.

“How’s the pain now?”

“Bad, it’s bad,” Hawkeye moans, trying to pull away from her, to curl up and around his aching torso, to protect himself, somehow, though the threat is from inside, not out. 

“‘Bad’ isn’t useful information, doctor. Be specific.”

“Geez, nurse, is he gonna be okay?” one of the wounded asks. “He’s freaking me out.”

“Mind your own business, Private,” Margaret snaps hotly back at the baby-faced man across the bus. “Pierce! Report!”

Hawkeye pants shallowly. “Just--just a twinge. It’s gone. Aching. Feels like...someone’s been squeezing my insides around.”

“That’s not unexpected. Stop struggling. Lie back down.”

He does, if only because he’s too tired to move anymore. He lays there for a few minutes of blessed stillness, breathing loud. He’s soaked with sweat. He starts to shiver. The air was balmy and warm when they left, but now it feels chilly against his damp skin.

Margaret makes a disgruntled sound and starts to prod at him. It takes Hawkeye longer than it should to realize she’s checking him for the early signs of shock. 

“Hey, buddy, you okay?” It’s the same Private as before. 

“Private--,” Margaret snaps, about to tell the kid off again. Hawkeye waves her off.

“I’ve been better,” he tells the ceiling. “Sorry for bothering you.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I guess I’ve heard worse. Usually, though, when guys at the front scream like you just did, it’s ‘cos they’re gonna be dead soon. Are you gonna be dead soon?”

“ _Private!”_ Margaret shouts, clearly horrified.

Hawkeye croaks out a laugh. “Maybe. Why, you afraid of dead people?”

“Not anymore. You get over that real quick up there. Hell, my very first day on the ground, my best buddy from basic took a shell right to his head. You ever seen a headshot?”

“Just the aftermath,” Hawkeye says, which is a lie. Hawkeye Pierce has seen very little live combat, but Hermes has seen it all.

“It’s just about the worst thing you can ever see, I figure. After that, you can’t be scared of death anymore. You’d never get up in the morning, if you were.”

“Then I shouldn’t be worrying you any, Private,” Hawkeye reasons. 

“Not afraid you’re gonna die, sir,” the Private reiterates. “Way you sound, I’m afraid you’re gonna live.”

That shuts even Margaret up. For a while, the bus rocks on in stunned, ominous silence. Then a tire drops into a waiting pothole and Hawkeye yells and Margaret falls back into her drill-sergeant routine all over again. 

\--

By the time they reach their new location, Margaret has climbed up onto the shelf of the bus with Hawkeye and perches on the edge of his cot, holding his upper body in her lap, her hands bracketing his sides, holding him steady through the worst of the bumps. Hawkeye wants to make a few sly jokes, flirt with her a little just to see her eyes snap fire, but he’s too exhausted. His head keeps lolling back against her thigh only to jerk forward into wakefulness again with each new assault of pain.

He starts mumbling in Greek and she listens, frowning slightly. “What _is_ that?”

Hawkeye swallows. “Mother tongue,” he says in response and nothing more. The bus is slowing down. Hawkeye pushes back against Margaret, trying to sit up. “What-what’s happening? What is it?”

“Stop that,” Margaret snaps, grabbing his shoulders and pulling him back toward her. “We must have made it to the new position. We’ve been on the road for hours. That has to be it. Just hold still.”

“Everyone keeps telling me that. I’m going to get a complex.”

“How’s the pain?”

“Terrible.”

“Stabbing? Pressure?” 

“No. Aching. Agony. I never want to feel like my stomach is this close to my pancreas ever again.”

Margaret nods in satisfaction as the bus doors are opened. “Good, that means you’ll probably live.” She lifts his head and starts to slide out from underneath him.

“Wait, wait, where are you going?”

“You aren’t the only wounded man on the bus, doctor. I’m going to go wrangle my nurses and get them ready to unpack.”

“Margaret,” Hawkeye says, grabbing for her hand. “Thanks.”

Her expression softens. Gently--to his shock--she kisses his forehead. “Any time I can help hold you together, you just yell. I’m returning the favor, that’s all.”

He feels lonely with Margaret gone. 

“Hey, Private,” he says. He tries to turn his head, but it doesn’t do him much good from his position. 

“Yeah, buddy?”

“What are you in for?”

“Shrapnel in my leg. Doc said I was gonna get sent on to a hospital in Tokyo today for the rest of my recoup, but I guess that’s out the window, now.”

“Bug outs always throw the evac plans into chaos,” Hawkeye agrees. “Don’t worry. We’ll be back in our usual spot in a few days and they’ll have you out within the hour, then.”

“‘Out.’ I wish. Soon as I can walk again, they’ll ship me right back out to the front line.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye agrees, because he doesn’t have it in him to try and feed the kid a happy lie. “Shitty, isn’t it?”

“That’s an understatement,” the Private replies. Hawkeye can hear a rustling sound and then, to his surprise, a face appears at his elbow. The Private is a serious-eyed youth with hazel eyes and brown skin. When he smiles in greeting, he reveals a missing canine tooth. It lends him a scampish air that Hawkeye approves of immensely. “What are _you_ in for?”

“You shouldn’t be putting any weight on that leg,” Hawkeye scolds. He tries to sit up, get a better look at the kid--make sure he’s moving all right, doesn’t look too ashen--and just manages to get onto his elbows.

“Hey! What are you doing? You’re gonna pop a stitch or something and that angry nurse’ll deck me.”

Hawkeye huffs a weak laugh. He cups the Private’s cheek with trembling fingers and looks at his eyes. “Just--look up for me, huh? Good. And down? All right, all right. You don’t look so bad off. You can stand there until they come with the litters, but don’t blame me if you get a clot.”

The Private’s face lights up in understanding. “You’re a doc!”

“What gave me away? Was it the blood-shot eyes, the premature graying in the hair, the obviously _massive_ intellect?”

“The bossiness, mostly.” The Private pauses, grimacing. “You being a doctor and everything, you probably outrank me, huh?”

“Don’t worry about it, kid. Here in post-op, we’re all ranked only by who’s got the best battle scars.”

“Still puts you over me, sir, if the screaming and the special attention by that nurse is any sign.”

“Do me a favor, huh? Stop calling her ‘that nurse.’ She’s a Major, and that’s important to her. Better yet, use her name. It’s Houlihan, Margaret.”

“Sure, sir. I can do that. What about you? You got a name?”

“Hawkeye.”

“What! Weird name.”

“All right, wiseguy. What’s _your_ name?”

The Private grins. “Jack. But that’s just what the Army calls me. My given name is Peenaquim. It means ‘far-seer.’ I’m Blackfoot. You can call me Jack, too, though. I don’t care.” 

“Oh,” Hawkeye says. He shakes the kid’s hand with as little actual shaking as possible. “Farseer is pretty good, as far as given names go. My parents originally called me Benjamin Franklin.”

The Private snorts a laugh, “No kidding?”

“No kidding.” 

“Boy, stick with ‘Hawkeye.’ It’s dumb, but it’s better than _that_.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, thanks.” Hawkeye’s arms are starting to shake with the effort of holding himself up. “Hey, Jack, can you do me another favor?”

“Depends. Is it gonna get me in trouble?” 

“If it does, I’ll take the heat. I’m beat and could use something to lean on. Otherwise, I’m going to get a kink in my neck trying to look at you. You got a pillow in that cot over there?”

“Sure, sir.” The kid grabs his own pillow and sticks it on top of the one under Hawkeye’s head, situating the small tower carefully behind his back. “Good?”

It rubs uncomfortably against the scarring on his shoulder blades, but it’ll do. “Work of genius. You ought to go into the hospitality business after the war. You can do military corners, right?”

Jack ignores the weak joke, as well he should. “What happened to you, sir?” the Private presses, the light of curiosity bright in his eyes.

Hawkeye sighs. “A squirmish between me and some very bad types with big fists. I was on the mend--on my way back stateside, actually--but then I had a relapse. It’ll be awhile before I’m fighting fit.” Hawkeye yawns hugely. Now that the agony of the bus ride is over, his exhaustion hits with full force.

“Will you get to go home later, then, after the bug out?”

“Nah. My CO and I have a deal, now. One way or the other, I’m staying to finish out this war.”

“Dumb decision. I’d go home.”

Hawkeye smiles. “Yeah, well. I’m already here.”

The kid rolls his eyes. “White men. You’re all crazy.”

“Well, you’ve got me there. Listen, kid, I’ve enjoyed our time together and no offense intended but I uhm--” Hawkeye hums softly, his eyes already closing. “I think I’m tapped out.”

“Sure, Doc. Hey. Can I come talk to you later? Nobody from my unit got sent here but me, and it’s been real lonely.”

Hawkeye makes a vague noise of consent. A warm hand pats him a few times on the arm. 

“Thanks. Good dreams, Benjamin Franklin.” Hawkeye just catches the Private’s soft laugh as he falls to sleep. “ _Weird_ name.”

\-- Hawkeye wakes with a gasp and a jolt, reflexively trying to sit upright, to get away from the shadows of his nightmare. He half-scrambles out of the blankets (they’re all over him, surrounding him, choking him!) and puts his feet to the floor, pulling himself up with the use of his IV. His torso kicks in pain, unimpressed with the maneuver, but he ignores it, stumbling forward in the dark.

The dark. Why is it so dark? Where is he? He can’t see for shit and he swears he can hear _them_ , breathing deep, right against his neck. 

His shins hit an unexpected obstacle and he falls forward, landing on something warm and alive. He yells. The man who broke his fall yells, too.

“The hell? What--hey, Doc, is that you? Geez, why’s it so dark in here? You guys forget to pay the Army’s electric bill?”

Hawkeye tries to untangle himself from the man he has come to think of as ‘Private Jack’ and mostly succeeds in pushing them both half off the cot. Jack makes a frustrated sound and grabs at Hawkeye’s wrists, holding him still. “Just hold it, Doc. You’re fine. You can sit right here at the foot of the cot and I’m gonna sit right next to you, okay? There, that’s better. Boy, you’re sure heavy for a skinny beanpole.”

“Your leg--.”

“It’s all right. How’re your guts?”

Hawkeye hugs an arm snug around his torso. “Not great.”

“You gonna need a doc, Doc?”

“I don’t think so. Where _is_ everybody? There should be an on-duty nurse. And a doctor, too.”

“Forget the people, where are the lights?”

“Hey! You two chatterboxes. Keep chattering. I’m tryin’ to get to you.”

Hawkeye squints into the dimness. “Halt, who goes there?”

“Corporal Klinger, that’s who. I’m supposed to come in here and do a headcount, make sure nobody wanders off. I thought it was a dumb order at first, but seeing as apparently you dunderheads are moving around in the dark, guess the Colonel knows his stuff, after all.”

“Klinger! Where the hell is everyone? And who broke the generators?”

“Generator, sir, in the singular. The primary got busted up in transit. Turns out the secondary wasn’t so hot either. Everything went kaput about ten minutes ago. Hunnicutt and Nurse Able went to wrangle up some lamps.”

Hawkeye hears the tell-tale sound of a striking match and can just make out the shape of Klinger’s nose in the dull flame. He grins. “Now that’s a sight for blinded eyes.”

Klinger makes his way to them by the meager light and sits down on Hawkeye’s abandoned cot. “Can’t be sure, but I think all the other boys are still out. Weird how war makes everyone into such deep sleepers, huh? Used to think I’d never get used to it, but these days we could end up on the wrong end of a mortar shower, and I wouldn’t so much as roll over.”

“Oh, yeah. If it wasn’t for the nightmares and the panic attacks, we’d all sleep like babies,” Hawkeye drawls through his teeth. His jaws are clenched tight, the better to avoid screaming. 

“Hey, you okay?” Klinger asks, leaning forward.

Jack turns to face Hawkeye, too. “Can’t see shit in this light, but you’re breathing real funny. ...Sir.”

“It’s nothing to worry about, just a crippling sense of doom--how close are the walls in here, approximately? Do you know? I usually know. But that’s when I can see them. Now, I can’t see them, and damn if they couldn’t just be anywhere.”

“Ooh,” Klinger says, nodding. “I remember. You’ve got that whatsits, right? Claustrophobia.” 

“That’s the one. And right now I might as well be in a coffin-sized box.” Hawkeye tugs at the neckline of his scrub top. “It’s just my imagination that there’s no air in here, right? Just to be safe, nobody else breathe for a few minutes but me.”

Jack bumps Hawkeye’s shoulder with his own. “Can’t be a coffin-sized box, sir. I’m in here with you. And the Corporeal is, too. Give him a poke, sir, show’em you’re here.”

Klinger, obligingly, kicks Hawkeye in the shin. 

“ _Ow_. The hell, Klinger?”

“Sorry, sir. Hard to aim right in the dark. I was gonna just kick your toes.”

“That would have hurt, too!”

“What’s going on?” a sleepy voice calls from across the room. Hawkeye relaxes just slightly. The additional voice helps give his frazzled mind a better sense of perspective. There really is more open space here than he can see.

“Generator’s down,” Klinger calls back to the disembodied voice. “Don’t worry, we’ll have some light in here soon. You in pain or anything?”

“Nah, I’m all right. Wish you guys hadn’t woke me up, though. I was having a damn good dream.”

Hawkeye perks up and leaps upon the potential distraction. “Oh, yeah? Let me live vicariously. All I dream about are nightmares. What’ve you got?”

“Well, it’s kinda--.”

“I’m a doctor,” Hawkeye says back, brightly, “I’ve seen and heard it all, believe me.”

“All right, Doc. You know Rita Hayworth?”

“Only by reputation.”

“Well, in my dream, I knew her _real_ well, if you get my meaning.”

Hawkeye laughs, delighted. “I do, but, _please_ , tell me more.”

\--

For what feels like an eternity, they honor the age-old human tradition of swapping stories to keep the darkness at bay. Jack picks up from the unseen soldier’s recounting of his raunchy dream and winds them a variety of engrossing tales from his own life before the Army scooped him up. He recounts his childhood--his early life among his family and the people of his tribe; his forced education in a Catholic boarding school; his first awkward dalliance with a girl named Wendy, who had freckles and a pug nose--with such easy confidence and wicked use of language that it leaves all listening in compulsive giggles, the kind that are contagious and spread around the room like fire long after the initial stories are done and told.

Between the close presence of Klinger and Jack and the voices of the unseen soldiers across the way, Hawkeye manages to keep a lid on his phobia long enough for BJ and a few nurses to appear bearing gas lamps. They hang one carefully at the foot of every bed, and in the combined glow, Hawkeye can finally see the building’s walls. He takes a deep breath and lets it go out his nose. 

Jack peers at him in the dim light. “You look like hell, Doc. Hope they don’t try to use you as the poster patient for this place. It’d scare the boys off.”

“Hey, Hawk, we have rules about not fraternizing in post-op, you know. What was wrong with your own bed?” 

Hawkeye looks up at BJ with a leer. “Well, it was just so lonely.”

Jack laughs. “He can’t help it, sir. I’m a real dish.”

Hawkeye looks at the other man in some surprise--it’s rare that he can find men outside the 4077th willing to flirt with him, even in jest. He grins. “Like steak and potatoes with all the best fixings,” he agrees.

BJ rolls his eyes and approaches them both, gripping Hawkeye carefully by the arms. “Let’s go, Romeo. You and Juliet can chat just as easily across a length of floor as you can sitting on the same cot.”

“Goodbye, fair Juliet!” Hawkeye croons as BJ practically carries him to his own bed. “Something, something, you’re like the sun!”

Jack snorts. “What, don’t they teach you guys the classics in public school? That was pathetic.”

“It’s not my fault,” Hawkeye argues, his statement broken by a grimace of pain as BJ guides him into a supine position, “In my English lit classes, I had my own Juliet to contend with. Juliet Goldberg. The most beautiful girl in the second row, and always right there, within note passing distance.” 

BJ, well aware this story is a lie, anyway, gives Hawkeye’s torso an exploratory poke. “How’s that feel?”

“How do you think?” Hawkeye snaps, bristling with pain.

BJ nods. “Yeah, I figured. Stop moving around, all right? Charles is good--don’t tell him I said that--but even he can’t stitch up what isn’t there. You pull out all those stitches a third time, all your insides are going to tear up with them. Hold. Still.”

And with that rude awakening, BJ leaves him to go torment other hapless wounded. Hawkeye is starting to really sympathize with their poor patients. And to think he used to be downright charmed by BJ’s gentle bedside manner. Ha!

“He’s only looking out for you,” Jack says, softly. “You know that, right?”

Hawkeye wishes he had the strength to turn onto his side and put his back to the other man. Instead, he just sighs and stares up at the ceiling. “If I didn’t know that, I’d probably be less annoyed by it, honestly. It’s hard to explain. Me and Beej are really close, but our relationship’s a mess, lately. I told him a secret of mine I haven’t told anyone, ever. Turns out, friendships don’t run as smoothly on honesty as you’d think. Sometimes I think I’d be better off if I just kept lying.”

Jack chuckles softly. “You just say that ‘cos you’re inherently dishonest, sir. Honest guys--guys who don’t tell big fish stories about Juliet Goldbergs, I mean--they get along just fine telling the truth. So I’ve been told, anyway.”

Hawkeye turns his head toward the other patient. “Private, have you been telling me tall tales?” Hawkeye demands, with exaggerated surprise. 

Jack grins at him. “Me? I just like to embellish, a little. Not a good story without some gloss and shine, is it?”

In that moment, Hawkeye realizes that Private Jack--like Klinger and BJ and Trapper before him--is one of _his_. To what extent, he can’t yet be sure. He hadn’t even quite realized that Jack wasn’t being truthful, before, though now that he knows, he can just about make out the ways in which the man’s entertaining yarns stretched beyond belief.

“Always good to meet a kindred spirit,” Hawkeye says, warmly. “Yeah,” Jack says, eyebrows raised as if in recognition of some private joke, “It is.”

\--

Hawkeye dreams, and it’s a doozy. 

The mountain of Olympus is just as he remembers it. Brightly painted marble columns and floors of polished stone, glimmering with subtle veins of gold. He walks into the hall of his father’s estate and feels small and insignificant in the grand, looming space. He has never felt enclosed here, not once. 

The tables groan with platters of food, rich delicacies of his people that he has not tasted in hundreds of years. He reaches out for a sweet date pastry and takes a bite. It’s just as he remembers it, gooey and chewy with just the right kick. He hasn’t hungered for something so completely since he took it upon himself to deliver BBQ ribs to Korea in an attempt to bolster the camp’s morale.

Someone near his elbow clears their throat. He whirls--his sandalled feet are not grounded, he’s flying a few inches above the stone; his wings are whole and wonderful, they feel great--and grins in recognition at the woman standing next to him. “Athena,” he says, and he enjoys saying her name so much that he repeats it. “Athena! Athena! You look wonderful.” He flies at her, embraces her, kisses her cheeks.

Athena is his sister, the goddess of logic and knowledge and mind. She has a grim, holier-than-thou exterior, but she loves him, really. He’d never thought of it, before, but she reminds him very much of Margaret Houlihan. 

“You’re acting strangely,” Athena says. “Stranger than usual.”

“It’s because I’m dreaming,” Hawkeye says, brightly. “And it’s a very nice one.”

Athena frowns at him thoughtfully, perhaps musing over the likelihood of being nothing more than a figment of her brother’s mind. “I see,” she says, nodding. “That’s understandable, then.”

Hawkeye just pinches her cheek. “I’ve missed you,” he tells her.

“I haven’t missed you,” she retorts, “I just saw you yesterday; I haven’t had the time.”

Hawkeye laughs, delighted by her. He looks around them, cataloguing familiar faces, comparing them without conscious thought to other faces he now knows and loves. Dionysus attends court in the corner, putting on a grand show, a high crown of grapes on his head. (Hawkeye imagines Klinger in the same sort of fruit ensemble, more Chiquita-esque though it might be, and feels it is not so far a reach.) Aristaeus--a son of Apollo and therefore Hermes’s nephew--picks a few bits of meat off his plate and tries to feed them sneakily to the dogs lying at his feet. (Hawkeye sees a few loving bees circle the god’s head and thinks of Radar and his equally strong adoration of his animal friends). 

Asclepius, god of healers, who had trained Hermes in the art of medicine himself, sits with Boreas, god of the cold North Wind. Hawkeye watches in amusement as Boreas blusters on and on, boring old Asclepius half to tears. (He recognizes Charles’s boorish self-interest in the ever-blowing wind, sees Potter’s compassion and long-suffering in the lined face of the ancient physician). Hawkeye’s eyes continue to scan over the festive crowd, picking out other remembered faces, seeking out one in particular that he _knows_ will strike him with its strange familiarity once he sees it. There, enjoying a big piece of mutton, somehow away from his rock, is Hawkeye’s most beloved friend. Hawkeye is not surprised to find the other man staring right back at him. 

“Prometheus,” Hawkeye says, crossing the room to greet his old companion. They embrace as brothers long parted. In Prometheus’s shrewd eye and devious, knowing smile, Hawkeye sees BJ Hunnicutt reflected. Prometheus, too, is one of his. Or, perhaps it is he who belongs to Prometheus. It was Prometheus who first made humankind from damp clay, who defied the dictates of his fellow gods to bring the divine and secret power of fire to his lowly creations. Who was captured by his fellow gods and tortured eternally for this sin. But it was Hermes who invented fire in the first place and made sure to place it within Prometheus's reach. 

When he thinks to look, Hawkeye can see the god’s open wounds, his ever-regenerating liver bared to the world. “You should let me stitch that up.”

Prometheus looks down at himself and laughs. “What is the point, little flyer? It’s all a dream, isn’t it? It doesn’t hurt.”

Hawkeye nods. He’s not surprised that Prometheus, of all people, would understand immediately what the others don’t seem to realize. “I’m just remembering. It’s good. I thought I’d forgotten what you all look like.”

Prometheus cups Hawkeye’s cheek in his hand, meets his eyes with his own in a piercing, intimate gaze. “Look well, then.”

Hawkeye’s chin drops and he looks away, shamed by the accessing nature of Prometheus’s gaze. “I feel so alone,” he says. “I’ve forgotten what it was like. To be the holy messenger, the prince of thieves, the god of travelers and liars and rogues. I was once mercurial, incorrigible, _inhuman_. And now?” He gestures at himself. He is no longer wearing sandals or his traditional attire. He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his tattered red robe and lifts a bare, bruised ankle up from the floor, displaying his bent and splintered wings. “What am I now?”

“A product of the times,” Prometheus says, without judgement. “What good are gleeful liars and glorious lyres to my clay-formed children, now? They are drenched in blood. Every generation, they devise new and more terrible weapons of war. If you wish to know their natures truly--and yours, by extension-- you should speak to Ares, not to me.”

Prometheus points across the room to the god in question, where he sits alone at a small dining table. Hawkeye had not seen him before that moment. He hadn’t wanted to. 

“Great. I guess this dream is about to become a nightmare,” Hawkeye sighs. 

Prometheus spreads his hand against Hawkeye’s chest, right above his heart. He gently raps his knuckles against the god’s breastbone. “For all the changes you have seen and all the changes in you that are yet to come, one thing is constant and assured: I am proud to know you as my brother. Be brave. Be well.”

Hawkeye chokes on tears, sudden and embarrassing. He forces a watery grin. “Gods, you always knew how to make me cry. You ass.”

Prometheus chuckles and gives him a push. “Go. Speak to our brother and learn something.”

Hawkeye swallows hard and moves across the room. He feels like he’s walking--his wings are too tired to carry him airborne now that the illusion of his past self has melted away--in molasses. 

Ares watches him with dark, hollow eyes, a slight pull to his lips. Hawkeye has never been comfortable around the man. He is even less so now, after so much exposure to his art. Had his brother’s fingernails always been so stained with blood? Had he always smiled that way, with gray teeth like jagged gravestones? 

“My mark is finally on you, little brother. It looks good.” 

Hawkeye shudders in the sudden coolness of the room. His red robe falls of its own power down around his waist and the hem of his t-shirt lifts as if blown by a breeze. His back laid bare, the wounds there ache as they have not in days. He hasn’t looked at the damage, yet. When he turns his head away from Ares now, however, he has no choice. All the walls around him have turned to mirrored glass. He sees himself reflected a hundred times from every possible angle. He closes his eyes tight, but it’s too late. He sees the scars, the image of his caduceus scorn forever into his flesh, a stark reminder of all his failures. An old symbol of healing and fortune, cast in a new and bloodied light. 

Hawkeye pulls his robe up and over his shoulders again, opens his eyes, and forces himself to meet the knowing gaze of Ares, god of war.

“I’d love to chat,” Hawkeye says, voice tight, “But I don’t have the time. I only want an answer from you. Nothing more.”

Ares nods his head, serene and distant. He has a dagger in his hands, and he picks the dried blood out from under his fingernails with the equally bloody tip. The blade strikes Hawkeye as ridiculously old fashioned, and he wonders, inanely, if the other god also has a few grenades secreted under his tunic, perhaps hidden in the pockets of his wide-legged pants. “Go on.”

“Who am I, now?” Hawkeye asks, unable to keep a note of faint hysteria from his voice. “What am I? Am I a butcher? Am I just another cog in the ever-rolling machine of destruction you’ve built? What am I supposed to _do_? Am I a tool--a new instrument of war--for patching together your broken toy soldiers so you can shatter them against the stones again when you get bored? Am I meant to take away what remains and chuck their mangled souls away in the great cosmic incinerator? _What am I_? What have you _made_ me be?”

Ares stabs the dagger with great force into the table. It rattles. He grins up at Hawkeye with no humor at all. “You’re just the same as you’ve always been. A champion for the underhanded. A voice of the lowest, scummiest members of humanity.” 

Hawkeye swallows hard. “They aren’t like that. My people may be crooks and scamps and-and unrepentant fornicators, sure, but they aren’t _murderers_.”

“No? How many men do you think that adorable Greek lad killed before he found his way to your slab?” Ares asks, casually. “Would you like to know?”

“Don’t,” Hawkeye says. He presses a fist against his stomach.

“Six. Six men died at the end of that boy’s gun. His CO was very proud, I’m sure. Even his dear, sweet, artistic family would be proud. After all, their son did his duty, didn’t he? And now six dirty, evil Commies--.”

“-- _Stop_ ,” Hawkeye snarls. “It’s not like that. War isn’t like that. It’s not that easy, not that simple. You know that. _You know_.”

Ares smiles darkly and stands. Hawkeye backs instinctively away. The man _reeks_ of death and gunpowder. “I do know. I know that in war there are sides, and the sides are all that really matter. My side is right, your side is wrong, and to the victor go all the spoils.”

“They’re just people,” Hawkeye says, a little wildly. He starts to look around the giant hall, hoping to make eye contact with one of his other siblings, to beg them silently for help. “Human beings aren’t _born_ divided like that--good and bad, right and wrong. They make choices, and there are consequences, and that’s _it_ , that’s _it,_ none of them deserve to-to- _die_.”

No one will meet his wandering eyes. It’s as if they are all frozen in place, all looking away. Hawkeye takes another step back as Ares gets closer. 

“Humanity is just like any other living, mortal thing, Hermes,” Ares says, his words dropping heavily, like his solid, ominous steps as he advances. “Over time, it ages. And with age, it _rots_. Your precious people have gone rancid, and for every shitty soul you polish up and throw into paradise, another two fall into the burning pit--victims of their own depraved, self-interested evil.”

“No,” Hawkeye says. “That’s not--that isn’t--.” He yelps as his back--his _aching_ back; now that he knows with certainty what has been hacked into his skin, he can’t stop thinking of the pain--hits a painted marble column. Cornered again. Ares approaches. One, two, three steps. Hawkeye screeches in high, desperate agony as his brother god thrusts his fist into Hawkeye’s tender abdomen and gives his knuckles a grinding twist. 

“That unseemly cockroach of a man, the one you sent to hell? There’s dozens more just like him in every square mile of the globe. Irredeemable. Unnecessary. Better off dead.”

“It--it wasn’t his fault,” Hawkeye says, through teeth gritted tight with pain. “I failed him. It was me. He could have made it just fine, but I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t fast enough. It wasn’t his fault. He could have done it. He could have gotten better. They all can. I’ve seen it. I see it everyday. War makes minefields of men’s souls. But minefields can be cleared away. You just--you just have to be careful and take your time.”

“Oh, sweet brother,” Ares practically coos. “You have such great faith in them. It’s a pity they won’t return the favor, isn’t it?”

Hawkeye spits in his face, spewing saliva and blood. “Fuck you. You have no idea what they feel or think about me or anything. You’re just war. War doesn’t--war doesn’t know _shit_ about how people really are. If you did--if you did, peace would never come. But it does. And it will. And I’m--that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to--I’m gonna help make peace, what little I can.” 

Ares’s fist leaves his torso and Hawkeye groans. Everything hurts, again. He’s so tired of hurting, and judging from the angry fire in his brother’s eyes, he can expect more pain to come. 

Ares snarls in absolute rage, sloughing Hawkeye’s spit from his cheek with the back of his hand. He pulls his fist back, ready to strike. Abruptly, however, the look of violence fades away, replaced by confusion. Ares looks down in pure puzzlement. Hawkeye follows his gaze--and dissolves into helpless, braying laughter. 

Ares, perhaps predictably given the name, goes commando. His wide-legged pants pool like dark water around his ankles, now. Hawkeye watches in delight as the war god’s face tints a mottled purple, the man’s lips moving in soundless anger, gabbling like a beached whale. Behind him, Prometheus stands up from his crouch on the floor, grinning from ear to ear as he meets Hawkeye’s gaze, a glow of triumph in his eye. 

Hawkey laughs harder, not even minding that it hurts terribly to do so. He lets his legs go weak and slides down the side of the pillar, clutching his stomach and laughing his head off in sheer, uncomplicated joy. Prometheus, giver of fire, creator of mankind, has just pantsed Ares, the god of war. 

“You--you!” Ares roars, turning on his heel, all his rage directed at Prometheus, Hawkeye forgotten. 

“Me, me?” Prometheus echoes in mock innocence. “Oh, I really think I’ve done enough, don’t you? Let’s let someone else have a turn.” Prometheus gestures out into the hall with a wave of his hand. 

“What?” Ares sputters, turning toward a mob of jeering gods and goddesses, all wearing wide, fixed grins. “What are you doing? Stop! Stop this instant!”

“Hey, Hermes,” Dionysus says, casually dumping a keg full of bitter wine over Ares’s head, “Did you know that I’m a wine enthusiast?”

Hawkeye knows the lead in to a joke when he hears it. “Oh?” he offers, playing straight man from his place on the floor.

“Yeah,” the god of revelry replies, grinning wide. “The more wine I drink, the more enthusiastic I get!” And he pulls the now sodden Ares into a light chokehold, kissing his damp cheek with a loud, wet smacking sound effect. 

“What kind of math do birds like?” Athena asks, her expression much more reserved than that of her inebriated brother. 

“What?” Hawkeye replies, gamely. He’s starting to sense a burgeoning theme. 

“ _Owl_ gebra,” Athena says, with a slight grimace of distaste. She snaps her fingers and, with a great ruckus of rustling feathers, several dozen snowy owls descend from the rafters, surrounding Ares and bashing him about with their bodies and wings. Ares yells and flails at the avians to no avail. By the time the owls depart again, the god of war is _covered_ head-to-toe in soft white down, made sticky with Dionysus’s wine. 

Ares starts to back away from the other gods now, holding up his hands in self-defense, “My siblings, my friends--.”

“What, uh, what do you call--uh, what do you get if you cross a bee with a doorbell?” Aristaeus asks, stammering. Never one for the spotlight, was Aristaeus.

“What do you call it?” Hawkeye rejoins immediately. He uses the column behind him as a support and struggles slowly to his feet. 

“A, uh. A...hey, what was it again?” Aristaeus asks the mob, flummoxed.

“A _humdinger_ , obviously,” Boreas sniffs, rolling his eyes and huffing icy air from his round cheeks. 

“Right!” Aristaeus exclaims, excitedly. He pauses. “Oh, gee, I nearly forgot--now!” 

From the folds of the god’s toga, a small but mighty swarm of bees takes flight, targeting Ares, who begins to run. His soaked garments trip him up. He falls flat on his face, screaming in terror as he covers his head and curls up into a ball to fend off the attacking insects. 

“Where--?” Asclepius begins, but Hawkeye holds up a hand, cutting him off.

“No offense to all of you, I’m sure the rest of this show is just as great, but--well, I think that’s enough, don’t you?”

The gods trade uneasy glances, muttering among themselves. 

“We had a lot more coming,” Asclepius says.

“He’s been very hard on you, Hermes,” Prometheus adds. “Surely he deserves--?”

Hawkeye waves him off. “It’s not about deserves. It’s not about revenge. I appreciate the sentiment, I really, _really_ do. But, well. That’s enough. Aristaeus, do me a favor and call off your kids, huh?”

“Okay, Hermes. Uh. C’mon, fellas.” 

Hawkeye waits as the bees disperse. He then walks--shuffles, more accurately, drags himself, perhaps--toward the now cringing, crying Ares. “All right,” he says, pulling the man onto his back to get a better look. “All right, it’s all right. No one else is going to tell a joke, I swear. Let me see. There you go, just like that.” Hawkeye turns Ares’s head this way and that, studying the rising welts. It strikes him for the first time, in that moment, how much the god actually resembles Frank Burns when he cries.

“Anybody got any uh--what would do it--any baking soda? Or lavender?” Hawkeye looks around at the blank faces. “Or some mud, in a pinch. Not exactly sanitary, but it works.”

“What are you doing?” Prometheus asks, frowning. They all look similarly taken aback. Even old Asclepius--who should know damn well how to treat a bee sting--seems bemused. 

“What do you think? I’m taking care of these stings.”

“Why?” Athena asks, coming closer. She kneels gracefully next to him and hands him a sprig of lavender, perhaps borrowed from Demeter, who stands nearby (and reminds him strongly of Nurse Yamato, now that he thinks about it). Hawkeye smiles at her and proceeds to mash the flowers up between his finger and thumb. 

“Because. I’m-I’m a doctor. And he’s hurt. That’s why.”

“You would do that for someone who hates you? Who’s hurt you so much for so long, with no remorse?”

Hawkeye stares at her. He stares at all of them, dumbfounded. “Ares is wrong about me,” he says, slowly. He carefully rubs the gifted lavender oil over the red, painful looking bumps on the god’s face. “I have definitely changed. But I was wrong, too. There’s nothing broken about me. I _am_ different, now, but I’m...better, actually, than I was. The humans have taught me something important, something I never knew before. I just didn’t realize it until now.”

“What did you learn?” Athena asks, her eyes alight with interest and curiosity and just a bit of envy. Athena loves to learn above all else. 

“Forgiveness,” Hawkeye says, finishing up his treatment and wiping the residual gunk on his bathrobe. “Compassion. Understanding.” 

At Athena’s blank look, Hawkeye smiles and gently kisses her cheek. “It’s all right. It’s not your fault that you don’t know these things. I didn’t know them, either, at first. It’s just that I’ve been learning the same hard lessons again and again for hundreds of years--ever since I lost you all. I was bound to pick it up, eventually. It wasn’t easy; it _isn’t_ easy. And it’s not always a pleasant thing to have, all of that messy, human feeling. But, actually--I’m glad I’ve got it, now, all the same.”

Hawkeye leverages himself against Athena’s shoulder and gets to his feet. He sways slightly. Athena puts her hand against his arm, providing support. He smiles down at her, missing her more than ever. 

“I should go, I think,” Hawkeye says to the room at large. “This dream or-or vision or what have you has been informative, but frankly I always get bored by the first intermission. Thanks for the food. And the morality lesson. And the laughs, questionable as those were.” 

At the silence that follows, Hawkeye waggles a pretend cigar and puts on his best Groucho Marx. “‘I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.’ ...Hm. Tough crowd.”

Hawkeye pauses, glancing down at Ares. He offers his brother god a hand.

Ares, with a familiar, ferret-y sneer, simply bats it aside. Hawkeye just smiles, shrugging in an exaggerated, campy manner. “Well, really, what did I expect?”

And then he wakes up to the familiar sound of a man’s final, rattling breath.

\-- 

It’s the kid across the way, the one with big dreams of Rita Hayworth. This knowledge hits Hawkeye hard, and for a moment all he can do is sit up in his cot, eyes closed, heart aching. The ghost of the dead man stands near his own body, staring at it in obvious shock. Hawkeye isn’t as surprised. They almost always lose at least one wounded man during or after a serious bug out. It’s why the Colonel avoids them as much as he can--anything over ten miles represents a fatal risk. Hawkeye can’t help but wonder if, maybe, this is his fault. BJ and Margaret and the others had been so focused on Hawkeye himself during the move--had he distracted their attentions from others in more serious need? 

But, no. To assume such a thing fails to give proper credit to his friends. Sometimes, people just die.

“Pst. Hey. Kid,” Hawkeye whispers. The ghost, reflexively, looks at him. He points to himself, surprised by the acknowledgement by a man who is obviously living. Hawkeye forces a smile. “Yeah, you. C’mere.”

The ghost approaches, uncertainty written clear in every step. Hawkeye tries to exude a sense of confidence and assurance that he doesn’t currently feel. How in the hell is going to get this kid where he needs to go? One more walk, even a gentle one, will be too damn much for his torn up guts. Even if he comes back mostly alive, BJ will kill him for it.

“All right, kid. I won’t bite, I promise. I need your help, though. Consider this venture a team effort, huh? We’re gonna use the buddy system, just like a good old-fashioned three legged race. Thatta boy. Give me a hand up.” The ghost reaches out and suffers himself to be treated like a crutch as Hawkeye leverages himself painfully out of his bed. The process is slow and awkward and leaves him hanging there, leaning hard on the soldier’s shoulders, panting for breath. Gods, this will not end well.

“Ok. So far, so good,” Hawkeye says. The ghost does not look convinced. “Now, I just gotta--.” Hawkeye goes to rest his ear against the man’s own and ends up nearly falling on his ass when his knees unexpectedly buckle. He’s surprised when it’s two pair of hands instead of one that catch his fall and pull him upright again. 

Private Jack offers him a wicked sort of grin. “Hey, cousin. Need some help?” Then, to Hawkeye’s increasing shock and confusion, the Private turns to his dead friend and says, brightly, “Geez, Rogers, it’s a good thing for you I’m around. Way this old god is looking, you’d sooner end up haunting the Australian outback than getting where you need to go.”

“Hey, watch it,” Hawkeye grumbles, reflexively. Then, more consciously, “Wait, can you--? What is--? _Who are you_?”

Private Jack rolls his hazel eyes and ducks under Hawkeye’s other side, providing more thorough support than the ghost alone can give. “Depends on the day. You know how that is. As far as you’re concerned, though, you can call me Na’pi. But maybe to you I’m better known as The Old Man.”

\--

“He’s my responsibility,” Hawkeye argues for what feels like the fifteenth time. Perched on the edge of his old bed, Rogers’s ghost lingers around his own dead body, viewing his slack features from all angles as the two gods bicker like two hens.

“I don’t care if he is, Doc. You try to take anybody to the Sand Hills right now, you’re gonna end up unraveling and probably take that poor dead guy with you. You’re a mess. Let me go, instead. I know the way, just like you.”

“It’s different, these days. They don’t go where they used to go.”

Jack--Na’pi, the Old Man--snorts. “The wrapping paper may be different, my brother--it’s got more flash and sparkle than it used to--but the old ways always remain. He’s dead. He’s gonna go where the dead go. Call it Hades, call it the Hills, call it Heaven for all I care. I can follow a road, same as you.”

Hawkeye opens his mouth, and Na’pi holds up a hand, cutting him off. “Rogers was my friend. We’ve been in the same company since basic training. I care about his stupid self. He’s just another dead soldier, to you, right? So, let me take him home.”

That takes all of the wind out of Hawkeye’s sails. He sighs heavily, waving a hand in resignation. “Fine. Fine, go. Just...when you come back, I have a lot of questions. And don’t put too much weight on that leg, all right? You could still get a clot.”

“Yeah, yeah, Doc, I get it. Don’t worry so much. And it’s good if you got questions, ‘cos I got _all_ the answers.” Na’pi stands and, in a gesture that makes Hawkeye’s eyes go over all watery, runs a light hand through his hair, tender and intimate. “It’s good to see you alive and well, my friend. There’s not so many of us, anymore. Don’t throw away your existence so damn easily, huh?”

Hawkeye swallows around the sudden lump in his throat and manages a jerky nod. He watches with bright eyes as the light to Rogers’s path opens up, a great gash in the world. Na’pi waves his buddy over and together the god and the ghost disappear into the glow. 

Hawkeye stares at the empty space left behind for a long while before giving into the demands of his aching body and lying down for a long nap. He dreams, he’s certain, but nothing concrete, and nothing that remains when he wakes up hours later to the bright light of day.

A mug full of water appears under his nose. 

“Good morning, sleeping beauty. For a minute, I thought you were dead. But, nah. You’re still here. Good job. I’m impressed, actually, ‘cos you still look like shit.”

Hawkeye can’t muster up the energy to retort with words, but he does manage a scathing glare. 

Na’pi puts his dark hands up in a gesture of self-defense, laughing in the face of Hawkeye’s ire. “I’m only being honest with you. I figure it sets a good precedence for the rest of the conversation we need to have. Put two beings like us together, the lies start flying fast and hard real quick. But I don’t think that’s what you need right now, is it?”

Hawkeye drinks the whole mug of water before trying to speak. He looks around post-op with a wary eye, but no one is within direct earshot, and even those who might be are more focused on themselves and their work than the conversation of two wounded men. “A little truth would be useful, right now, yeah. We can start with what you are.”

Na’pi’s grin is infectious, but Hawkeye knows the disease by name and he’s developed an immunity to that oh-so-familiar charm. He perseveres in his grumpiness. He’d even fold his arms over his chest in a disapproving manner if he didn’t think such a gesture would do him more harm than good. 

“Aw, gee, Doc, don’t you know your own kin?”

“You’re a god. I figured that one out.”

“Not just any god. One of _your_ kind of gods. The keeper of roads and doorways, the maker of men and creator of stories and lies. They call us tricksters, sometimes, for lack of a better word to use.”

Hawkeye nods his understanding, though he frowns slightly. “You said your followers called you ‘Old Man’?”

“That’s right. My people are the Blackfeet. They’re around still, despite everything. Some of them even still believe in me.” 

Hawkeye pushes away his irrational pang of jealousy. What does belief matter, anymore? Faith doesn’t keep a god fed, keep him warm, keep him from suffering the hollow ache of loneliness and regret. So nobody knows Hermes from Adam, anymore. Big deal. A lot of folks know Hawkeye Pierce. That ought to be good enough. “My CO knows some of your stories. He told me one. Way I heard it, you and your missus created men and women and then made death. That’s not really _my_ area of expertise.” 

Na’pi waves a hand. “Semantics. You got another trickster in your patheon did that kinda stuff, right? Prometheus. Ended up on a rock for his trouble. Isn’t that always the way? You try to do one good thing--or a couple amoral ones, anyway--and the universe comes ‘round and kicks you up the rump for it. Backlash and blowback--that’s all part of being a trickster, too.”

Hawkeye laughs hollowly. “That explains a lot,” he says, managing to gesture at his own weak state with a flick of his fingers.

The other god looks upon him with solemn eyes. “That’s not Fate in action, brother. Nobody out there is working to keep _you_ humble, I’d wager. Except yourself, maybe.”

Hawkeye raises his eyebrows at that. “Beg your pardon?”

Na’pi leans forward and grips Hawkeye’s forearm, bending low to better meet his eyes. “I don’t know your story, friend, and I don’t know what brought you to here, but whatever sins you think you committed that need this level of punishment--you’re wrong. You’re killing yourself out here, Doc. And you don’t deserve it.”

Hawkeye shakes him off and ends up gritting his teeth in pain, hunched miserably over his torso, hissing in breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“All right, all right. You wanna start up with the lies, already, that’s fine by me.”

Hawkeye ignores the jibe and presses on to his next question. “If you’re still here--still alive--does that mean there are other gods, too? My pantheon--.”

“--Don’t know any Greeks but you,” Na’pi interrupts. “But we’re definitely not the only ones left. Everyone has scattered, sure, and maybe nobody is as tough and powerful as they used to be. But we’re surviving, in our way. In fact, once you’re on your feet again, I got some friends I want you to meet. Other psychopomps. Some of ‘em are even nearby, working this war just like you. Just like us, I should say. Rogers is fine, by the way. Went right into his light with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye.”

The relief and joy that Hawkeye feels at this series of simple pronouncements is infinite and difficult to express. So, he just closes his eyes and allows himself to revel in the sensation. He doesn’t know for certain if any of his family still remains, yet there is still hope. There _are_ other gods in the world, and some of them are even out there actively guiding the dead. It’s a relief to know that, especially--comforting to know that the fates of all of the thousands of departed in this warzone do not truly rest on his shoulders alone. For the first time in many long years, Hawkeye experiences a sense of something akin to peace.

\--

Time passes, and the world continues to spin madly on. The need for the bug out ends and the camp returns as ordered to its previous, more familiar position with no incidents or further casualties. (Hawkeye would call it “going home,” but only to himself, and not without a wry smile.) 

Whiling away the hours in post-op as his body continues to heal, Hawkeye finds himself bored but not restless. After so long a time spent doggedly fixated on his work, always keeping in motion for fear of what thoughts and memories might hound him in the stillness, it’s almost pleasant to have no expectations placed upon him except to live and be.

Na’pi--Private Jack, to the wider world--manages some bureaucratic finagling worthy of his archetype and is sent not to recuperation in a Tokyo hospital but to a newly erected tent just across the compound from the Swamp. 

“I got a lot of skills make me suitable for reassignment to a MASH unit,” Jack says with a gleam in his eye. Hawkeye smirks at him, getting the inside joke, this time. Over the weeks that follow, any lingering ghosts fall into Jack’s capable hands. Hawkeye feels a pang of envy, at first, but the pain of it is shallow and fleeting. For all that Hawkeye would like to serve the honored dead, he doesn’t miss the strain on his heels or his heart. He trusts Jack to do right by them in his stead.

Hawkeye has just finished reclaiming his cot in the Swamp, sore but cleared once more for light doctorly duty, when Jack pokes his head in with a cheerful “knock, knock, Doc!”

“Who’s there?” Hawkeye replies, gamely.

“Tank,” Jack says, without hesitation.

“Tank who?”

“You’re welcome!” Jack says with a laugh.

Hawkeye groans at the bad joke. “Welcome for what, exactly?”

“For this!” Jack crows, crossing to Hawkeye in a few bounding steps and pulling him up to his feet with a lurch. Hawkeye flinches.

“Hey, use some finesse, will you? I’m still 90% scotch tape and bailing wire, here.”

“Sorry, brother. I guess I just got too excited for my own good. But you gotta come with me. You’re going to want to see this.”

‘This’ turns out to be the VIP tent--an area that, as far as Hawkeye is aware, is not scheduled to house any visitors, currently. Despite what the official record may state, however, the usually spacious tent is full to bursting with people. Hawkeye blinks rapidly at the onslaught, taking it all in. There are men and women and a few beings harder to place on the spectrum of gender. Some of them--like himself and Jack--wear familiar olive green uniforms. Most, though, bear a wide variety of what Hawkeye has come to think of as “civvies,” all of different colors and styles. One of the men is actually nearly naked, wearing nothing more than a sheer, toga-esque wrap--arguably the most “civilian” civvies of all.

When he and Jack burst through the tent doors, all heads turn toward them as one. Hawkeye feels a brief beat of shyness under the force of so many piercing eyes...but the moment doesn’t last. He grins broadly, lifting a hand in welcome. “Hello, strangers. Welcome to our humble abode. Has Jack offered you any refreshments, yet? I could rustle up some homemade hooch, for sure. And maybe a few tins of vegetables, as long as you don’t mind that the beans are older than most of you.”

A woman standing near the VIP bed laughs. “Oh, my, that would be _very_ old, indeed.” Hawkeye frowns at her. She looks barely out of her teens, all gawky, giraffe-esque limbs and wide-eyed innocence. 

“Oh, hey, Hawkeye! I want to introduce everyone to you, eventually, but this is a great start. Vee, c’mere and give your descendent a hug, huh?”

“‘Descendant?’” Hawkeye echoes, just before the young girl in question races with inhuman speed across the tent and practically throws her whole self into his arms. He staggers under the force, wounds giving a twinge.

“I’m Vanth!” the woman says, brightly. “My pantheon came out of the Etruscan civilization. That actually makes us more like cousins, of a sort, though certainly I’m older than you by a bit.”

Hawkeye blinks at her. “You’re a goddess.”

Vanth laughs and kisses him abruptly on both cheeks with another close squeeze around his middle. “You’re not so bad yourself, tiger,” she jokes as she finally releases him and steps away.

Jack puts a steadying hand on Hawkeye’s back and gestures to the assembled crowd with his other. “They’re _all_ gods, Hawk. Psychopomps, more specifically. Exactly like us. About as close to bloodkin as you can get, these days.”

Hawkeye’s mind reels and he finds his fragile, hard-won strength difficult to maintain under the force of this news. Jack’s supporting hand is suddenly a vital, bracing one, gripping his arm and holding him upright. “Whoa! Easy. Anubis, bring that chair over this way, would you? Yeah, thanks.” 

Hawkeye sinks into the offered chair and stares up at the faces all around him. “I can’t believe it. There’s--there’s so many of you.” Hardly more than a dozen, in truth, but compared to _none,_ he feels as if he’s rediscovered an entire lost city.

“There’s even more than us,” the god called Anubis assures in a soft rumble. He is a tall, broad man with a shade of night-black skin that sets off the hated olive-green of his uniform remarkably well. Hawkeye’s eyes flick instinctively to the god’s collar and shoulders. Major.

“Anubis works in Mortuary Affairs,” Jack offers, watching Hawkeye’s assessment of his stripes. “Hell, you’ve probably sent bodies his way before.”

Hawkeye nods at this information, offering the man a weak waggle of his fingers in greeting. “How...how _many_ more?”

Anubis shrugs. A few of the other gods turn to each other, muttering, comparing notes and numbers. 

“More than a hundred, less than a thousand,” a dark figure with a heavy Australian accent offers. The gods around him nod in agreement.

“‘More than a hundred,’” Hawkeye echoes, and struggles to process his mixed emotions. Gratitude for such a high number. Deep sorrow for an account that is so very low. Back in the days of his peak, the gods of his pantheon alone had numbered over three-hundred named and active deities. The numbers across the globe in those days would have been even more impressive, calculating at least one god for every dozen or so human beings crawling on the Earth below. 

“Don’t worry about it, Hawk,” Jack orders, crouching down so that he and Hawkeye are at eye level. “We find more and more folks wandering around out there all the time. The point is, you got friends in high places, you know? And I want you to meet ‘em properly. I might have sprung this on you too soon, though. You look beat. Told you I got too excited. Right after introductions are done, I’m going to put you back to bed.”

Hawkeye rallies up a knowing smirk. “I thought you’d never ask,” he croons, batting his eyelashs. 

Jack ruffles his hair. “Please, brother. As much as we’d both enjoy it, I’m not a sucker. It’s clear as day you got your heart set on somebody else. Besides, I got an old lady back home, remember? And she doesn’t appreciate me wandering off.”

Hawkeye frowns, having no _idea_ what Jack is getting at--as far as Hawkeye knows, his heart is set in its chest, exactly where it belongs, and nowhere else--but it doesn’t matter as the topic of romance is dropped in favor of completing introductions. Jizo, Freya, Epona, gorgeous Daena and her severe sister Vizaresh, and more. Hawkeye knows he’ll never remember all their names and the brief, stunted histories that Jack provides with them. Hawkeye can readily recount at the drop of a hat every single bone in the human body. It’s harder, though, with people--even gods, even family. He’ll get it, eventually. He’s damn well going to put forth the effort, at least. 

“It’s good to finally meet you,” Vanth tells him as she and Jack work together to get Hawkeye standing on his feet. “Everybody who’s anybody and working the afterlife angle has heard rumors about your work. Tell me, is it true that you ferried two dozen souls on your very first day in Korea?”

Hawkeye, stunned at the realization that his work is _known_ , let alone a topic of regular speculation, shakes his head. “It wasn’t--there were only twenty-two of them.”

Vanth’s eyes go wide. “Dear gods. I wouldn’t dare guide so many souls at once. What were you _thinking_?”

Hawkeye experiences a brief flash of jumbled memories, much older than that day on the roads of Korea, heading toward the camp that would become his new home. “Archeon,” he says, the word feeling odd and foreign on his lips after so long. “Back in the day, way back, Zeus routinely tasked me to transport the amassed souls of the dead from the world above to the banks of the river where Charon’s craft waited to take those who could pay his toll across the water. I...there were hundreds of them, every time. Whole cities reduced to rubble in war or wiped out by famine or riddled with plague and no one to guide them but me. I used to do it like that all the time.”

Vanth looks upon him with eyes full of pity. “That was a long time ago. The world is different, now.”

Hawkeye offers her a wry grin. “Yeah. I’ve figured that out.”

“You should take care of yourself,” Vanth scolds, as if she is in fact the cousin she claims to be. “Immortality has its own limits. And I, for one, would like to be your friend for a long while to come.”

Hawkeye’s grin softens into something more genuine. He’s the one who kisses her cheeks, now. “Look me up soon, all right? We can grab dinner in the mess hall and really put our immortality to the test.”

Vanth laughs. “It’s a date. Come on, doctor. Let’s get you back to this bed of yours.”

Hawkeye allows himself to be man (and woman) handled to the door of the Swamp but no further. “Trust me, I’m fine. My personal physician is right on the other side of these canvas walls, probably working himself up into a good lather about where his favorite patient has gone.”

Vanth and Jack bid him goodnight--Jack promising them both that he’ll set up another rendezvous for the death-guide gods soon--and leave him to his business. Hawkeye is grateful for the seconds of solitude. Between all his time in post-op and the god party and now his return to the Swamp, alone time feels very precious, indeed.

The door to the tent swings open and Hawkeye smiles warmly at the sight of BJ’s scowling face. “Where in the _hell_ have you been?” the mortal man demands, and Hawkeye surrenders himself to being dragged (gently) into the tent and thrown (also gently) onto his own cot. 

“Oh, you know. Just reconnecting with some long-lost family, that’s all. Hey, Beej, can you pour me a drink and sit down, already? I’d really like to be alone right now. Alone _with_ you, I mean. You should stay.”

BJ’s worried scowl doesn’t soften, but he does hand Hawkeye a (watered down, probably) gin and obligingly parks himself on his cot. 

“All right,” BJ says, with the long-suffering tone he has adopted quite frequently with Hawkeye as of late. “ _Now_ what’s going on?”

\--

BJ swirls his empty glass as if there’s something in it. Hawkeye would offer him a refill, but he doesn’t think the other man is actually all that interested in getting drunk. It would probably only make what Hawkeye has explained to him even more confusing.

“Hundreds of you,” BJ murmurs, carefully neutral. 

“Sort of. Gods are different, from pantheon to pantheon. We have different aspects and do different things, just like mortals do. But, sure. We’re all the same, uh, species, I guess. And right now, a couple hundred of of my species are alive and kicking their way around the globe.”

“Mingling with humanity.”

“Most of them, probably, yeah. We need you, you know. The gratitude, the worship. It matters to us the way a good steak matters to a hungry soldier.”

BJ frowns. Hawkeye watches him closely, wonders what thoughts are churning around in his head. He’d only just started--sort of--to believe Hawkeye’s truth. Now, his altered worldview must expand even further. Not just one god in this war, but many. Not just one god walking his world, but hundreds, using their immortality and limited power for...well, for whatever they wanted, really. Not every god would have the best interests of humanity in mind. Hawkeye hopes the majority would, though. Someone needed to; humans sure didn’t.

“You have others like you, now. Out there.”

Hawkeye frowns, wondering why BJ seems so stuck on this particular point. “Yes. And?”

“Well, geez, Hawk. Before, it made sense to me. You were alone in the universe, practically, and felt you had a job to do. I understood how that might make it worth it--slumming around with the mortals, I mean. But now that’s not necessary, is it? You could all band together, form a new pantheon. Start a new religion, find new followers, build up your strength. Be a real god, again.”

Hawkeye stares at his friend. Even surrounded in the moment by all of his fellow deities, he’d never once thought of that sort of future goal for himself. Based on the reports from the others about their current activities, they hadn’t, either. Most of the gods present had other tasks in mind. They had lives of their own, “mingling,” as BJ had put it. No one had ever expressed any interest in returning to their old ways, of ascending above human society and reclaiming their former might.

“That was a long time ago, Beej,” Hawkeye replies, haltingly. “I don’t think we’d be suited for that kind of living, anymore.”

BJ sighed, putting down his glass. “All right, fine. But that still begs the question--why stay _here_? You don’t need to, anymore. You can go off with--with Jack, I guess, or any of the others. You could get out of here completely, leave the whole war and even the whole world behind and be with people who understand you--people you don’t have to lie to, every day.”

Hawkeye winces. “Well, I don’t _want_ to lie to anyone here.”

“I know. I know, Hawk. I just mean...well. Why are you sticking around, now that you know you’re not alone?”

Hawkeye shrugs and puts down his own emptied glass. It bumps up against BJ’s and creates a tiny, tinkling sound. “Because I wasn’t, ever, in the first place. Not since coming to Korea, at least. I’m not alone, BJ. I have all the family I ever wanted or needed, right here.” He pauses and reaches out impulsively, grasping the man’s hands in his own. “Hey. I’m not going anywhere. I intend to see this through. You and me, we’re going to be together to wave this damn war goodbye, all right?”

BJ’s expression is skeptical, still, but he breathes out a heavy sigh and nods his understanding. “Okay.” He says. “Good. All right.”

BJ doesn’t ask what Hawkeye expects. He doesn’t follow up his agreement with “but what about after the war is over?” and for that Hawkeye is glad. That’s a question he can’t answer, yet, and--if he’s being honest, even though it’s terrible and selfish of him--hopes he won’t have to answer for a long, long time.

\--

There’s a baby on the bus. There’s a baby on the bus, and its mother has just killed it, because Hawkeye practically _told_ her to and--.

Thankfully, Jack is sitting next to Hawkeye on the bus. The fellow god has made himself invaluable over the past ten months since he arrived at the 4077th. He’s considered a strange-yet-charming sort of guy, so it’s no surprise to anyone in the camp that he and Hawkeye become such fast friends. Even after moving into the empty fourth bed in the Swamp, that amiability between the two men only grows.

Jack reaches out and pulls the (still crying, but silently, now) ghost into his arms. Hawkeye sits still as a stone next to him, staring, staring, seeing nothing.

“I’ll take care of it,” Jack promises in a whisper, sometime later, and Hawkeye hears and acknowledges it but doesn’t really understand because, honestly, since when has their kind started guiding the spirits of chickens?

After it’s all over--after the enemy soldiers have passed them by, after the wounded and dead are settled back at the MASH, after Hawkeye stumbles from the OR and falls into a Jeep, numb inside and out and feeling as lost as any soul--though, it’s not Jack who comes to find him.

He’s just crashed through the wall of the (empty, thank gods, thank gods) Office Club with a Jeep and the car and his body are both covered in splinters and torn fabric and gods’ know what else and the passenger door opens with an angry squawk and BJ Hunnicutt slides carefully into the opposite seat.

“Hawk?” he asks, voice gentle and soft and full of a great and terrible fear.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Hawkeye admits, eyes wide and wild as a spooked horse. “Fuck, BJ, what’s happening?”

There are no lingering dead in the mental hospital. 

Hawkeye takes some comfort in that, at least.

\--

Sidney Freedman should, be rights, be the enemy to a man like Hawkeye--especially in the situation he is in. But Sidney, Hawkeye suspects, has never been entirely human, himself. And, at this point, what does it matter if the psychologist thinks Hawkeye is crazy or not? Come hell or high water, Sherman Potter made a promise, and a man like the Colonel would never break his promises; even if Hawkeye is declared completely cuckoo crazy, he will not be shipped away from his home.

Turns out, it was a baby. Not a chicken. 

That makes a lot of sense, actually, now that he remembers it right.

Even with all the rest of it--even knowing, from Hawkeye’s own lips, that Hawkeye is a fallen god and no mere man--Sidney just pats him lightly on the shoulder and wishes him a safe journey back to Uijeongbu.

\--

“So, your brains aren’t scrambled, anymore?” Jack asks--it’s the first thing out of his mouth, actually, when he reaches out to help Hawkeye clamber from the Jeep.

Hawkeye shoots him a wry look. “Nah. I think they’ve been pretty egged up for a long time, actually. Still, the good Doc seems to think that’s normal, around here.”

Jack makes a show of looking around the camp, teeming with life in the midst of chaos and death. There’s an impromptu game of kick-the-can going on a few feet away. Across the camp, two nurses are arguing over a magazine, debating the relative merits of some new lotion or other. Rizo sprawls out on a hood of another Jeep, carving something decidedly crass out of a piece of wood that Hawkeye is absolutely certain was stolen from a load-bearing plank of one of their tents. Margaret Houlihan is shouting at Klinger, who is sprawled down in the dirt doing frantic pushups, a difficult exercise to perform a jewel-toned a-line skirt and coordinating heels. Someone laughs as an unheard joke, as if on cue. “Yep. Seems about right, to me.”

\--

Hawkeye isn’t quite sure what to make of BJ upon the man’s reluctant return. BJ, his best friend who abandoned him without saying goodbye (hey, look, another one--thanks, Trap, for setting the precedent). BJ, who seems more wary than ever of him, now, as if his stint in the crazy house is a visceral, tangible thing that follows at his heels like a second shadow. BJ, who refuses, just _refuses_ to man up and tell him _goodbye_ , for godssakes.

“After everything we’ve been through!” Hawkeye whines at Jack one even, perhaps too drunk for his own good, “Everything! Why can’t he just admit that he’ll miss me?”

Jack rolls his eyes expansively and snatches the empty martini glass from Hawkeye’s lax grip. “Because he doesn’t _wanna_ miss you, you idiot. He doesn’t want to leave you at all. I swear, this war has made you real stupid _and_ crazy, brother of mine.”

Hawkeye stares at this pronouncement (the first part, not the second part; he can hardly argue that point, after all). “You think that’s all it is?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Hawkeye replies. Oh.

\--

A day later, when the end of the war is official and it’s all over (over, over!), Hawkeye corners BJ in a supply tent (gotta use those things properly before they all get taken down, he figures) and cups the other man’s cheeks in his hands and kisses him like Hawkeye will die if he doesn’t, which, hey, maybe he will. His immortality seems a little shaky, as of late.

“What...what was that for?” BJ breathes, once they’ve pulled apart for desperate want of air.

“Gods, BJ! Guess.”

BJ’s expression can only be described as ‘highly skeptical.’ “Well, typically I’d assume this was some sort of prank or scheme--your way of trying to trick me into saying the g-word.”

Hawkeye snorts softly. “That’s a fair point. But that’s not what this is. You know what this is.”

“We’ve got an extra room,” BJ blurts out, because the man is a lot of things but slow on the uptake isn’t one of them. “Me and Peg. There’s a whole room.”

Hawkeye tilts his head slightly. “And how would Peg feel about that?” Hawkeye honestly isn’t sure of the answer. BJ has read aloud almost every word of every letter the woman has ever sent (with some paragraphs edited out for decency, Hawkeye knows). Peggy Hunnicutt is a hell of a woman, and regardless of how everything shakes out, Hawkeye looks forward to properly making her acquaintance. But this…? This is a lot to ask, especially of a mortal woman in these modern times.

BJ shrugs. “I don’t know. But I can find out. We can find out. And whatever we can have, we’ll take. Right?”

Hawkeye smiles, feeling calmer and more grounded--in a good way--than he has in more years than BJ has even been alive. “Yeah. Right.”

\--

It’s a string of long goodbyes, then. Each encounter ends with vague promises of seeing each other again soon, but Hawkeye knows enough of time and mortality to know that they are _only_ promises, and ones made to be broken, at that.

\--

The camp breaks down, bit by bit. Tents and Jeeps and boxes of supplies go first. Then people start to follow, disappearing in droves. Hawkeye watches every fond farewell with a building lump in his throat. He has to excuse himself, after a while, has to hide away in what remains of the Swamp just to catch his breath.

“Hey, brother,” Jack greets, sitting down next to him on the hard-packed dirt. In a few seasons, after a few rainstorms, all signs of this camp will be rendered invisible. The land will regain its former state and grass will grow and animals will appear again, the ecosystem unburdened by the Human bodies clamoring all over it day and night. Hawkeye has no desire whatsoever to see that happen, for all that he supports mother nature regaining an upper hand.

“Where are you going, after this?” Hawkeye asks, unable to hide the fear and loneliness he feels at even having to ask. 

Jack’s smile is gentle and fond. He leans unselfconsciously forward, carding his fingers through Hawkeye’s hair just as he had months and months ago, before Hawkeye had quite understood who and what the other god was. “Oh, around. Maybe back to my people, for a while. They miss me, and I miss them. And I got so many new stories, now, that they should tell about me. ‘When Old Man went to Korea,’ you know.”

“Oh,” Hawkeye says, dully, learning into the touch of the other man’s fingers. If he closes his eyes and concentrates, he can almost feel the faint buzz of what remains of Jack’s power. Hawkeye would ask if Jack can feel the same from him, but Hawkeye suspects he doesn’t actually want to know the answer. He hasn’t led any dead to their final resting place since Jack’s arrival--these days, he suspects such a trek is beyond him entirely. Weirdly, he doesn’t actually mind.

He could a rest. A long one. About the length of a human lifespan’s worth, in fact.

“I’ve got two good feet. Hell, I’ve even got a car, back home. I know where California is, Hawkeye Pierce. I won’t neglect you; you’re my family, after all.”

Hawkeye feels a wash of great relief at those words. “How’d you know I’m going to California?”

Jack huffs his disbelief. “What do you take me for? Everybody in this camp knows whose ‘chopper you’re leaving on, Hawkeye. None of your secrets are secrets, now.”

“The others will visit, too, right?” Hawkeye asks, meaning the rest of their extended family, all of those other gods.

Jack grins. “As much as you want and then moreso, I’d figure. Boy, I hope your boyfriend’s old lady is an understanding soul.”

\--

Peggy Hunnicutt stares him down with an accessing, level look for exactly four long, interminable seconds before she throws herself at him like a blond bomb, tossing her arms about his neck and kissing both of his cheeks with warm, familiar lips. “Welcome home,” she whispers at him, giving him another squeeze. The embrace she then inflicts upon her husband is even tighter and more enthusiastic, but only just.

After that moment, Hawkeye loses all fears about his reception into the Hunnicutt home. He’s part of the family faster than he can blink, and though his secrets are alarmingly unsecret (“See feet?” little Erin demands, on just after politely shaking his hand and calling him ‘Unc’a Hawkeye’ in a sweet, measured voice), he has no fear of being known. 

In the end, he has the wings removed. BJ works with a few trusted professionals he knows from his residency days to secure the space, the supplies, and the time. He performs the surgery himself with Peggy at his side, playing rudimentary nurse. Hawkeye falls asleep with aching, tattered feathers and wakes up with naked ankles. It’s strange, but it feels right. And after several tedious weeks of recuperation, he can only be grateful for the lack of pain. Sure, the bones in his ankles look a bit malformed, but no one who matters will mind, and it doesn’t affect him at all, in physical space.

In a metaphysical environment, it’d be another matter entirely, but Hawkeye has no intention of walking (or flying) anywhere but on the corporal, mortal plane ever again. 

He calls the man codenamed Daniel Pierce, after a while, and solemnly thanks him for his service before declaring their business arrangement complete. It startles Hawkeye to no small measure when, toward the end of the phone call, the old man warmly invites him (and his new family) to visit him up in Maine, sometime. 

“I keep telling all these folks about my doctor son, the big war hero” ‘Daniel Pierce’ says, with a laugh, “It’d sure be nice to get to show you off. Besides, an old man gets lonely, sometimes, you know?”

Hawkeye does know, and he makes a mental note to ask Peggy, later, about arranging the trip.

\--

He teaches Erin sleight-of-hand tricks and dirty jokes and how to fake convincing tears. And, after some hesitation, he even teaches her his own dialect of old, half-forgotten Greek, just for fun. 

Over time, he sees a recognizable gleam of mischief develop in her eyes, and though its inception could just as easily be attributed to BJ (or Peggy, who is herself no slouch in the pranks and puns department), Hawkeye likes to give himself the biggest piece of the credit for raising such an irascible, unstoppable force. Erin Hunnicutt will never really be a goddess, but Hawkeye won’t stop trying to make her feel like one, all the same.

\--

For a year, Hawkeye sleeps in the guest bedroom and simply calls BJ his dearest, platonic, friend.

It’s quite a shock, then, when Peg catches him heading down the hall one evening and grabs him by the seat of his pajama pants, tugging him backwards all the way into her and BJ’s bedroom and right into the middle of their marriage bed.

“Do you want this?” she checks with him, her fingers already plucking at the buttons of his stripped, cotton top. 

Hawkeye, bewildered, throws a look at BJ, but the mortal man is too shell-shocked himself to catch it. So, Hawkeye ignores him and turns his attention to Peg, instead. “More than anything.”

Peggy smiles. “That’s quite a statement, coming from a god.”

“Yes,” Hawkeye agrees, pulling the small, amazing, wicked little mortal woman up onto her tiptoes to give her a proper introductory kiss. “It is.” Peg’s eyes light up like Christmas (my, how he has assimilated!) when Hawkeye pulls BJ to him and kisses him, too...and, Hawkeye figures, everything is probably exactly as it should be, after that.

\--

Gods do visit, as Jack had warned.

Peg feeds them to bursting and drags them out to see the seaside and never allows a single one of Hawkeye’s so-called cousins to part before making them know, in no uncertain terms, that they are welcome back any time they please.

It’s all Hawkeye can do, himself, to keep from pushing every interloper out the door. After being on the receiving end of Peg’s enormous capacity for acceptance and love, he’s convinced that, eventually, one of his divine family members will try and steal the woman away, and that just will not do at all. 

\--

Hawkeye wakes one morning and makes a low, strangled sound to find a ghost sitting on the corner of their large, crowded marriage bed. For one terrifying, confused moment, he expects to recognize the dead being’s face. And he does, but only vaguely. It’s old Mr. Briskton, their neighbor from down the street. Hawkeye remembers, if only distantly, Peg mentioning that the man had been in poor health, lately--she’d taken his wife some soup.

Poor Mrs. Briskton will need something much stronger than soup, now.

“Hello, sir,” Hawkeye greets, softly. He pulls himself gently from the combined tangle of Peg and BJ’s arms and gestures that the old man should follow him. They pad together--one utterly silent, the other doing his best to be quiet, too--down the stairs and into the kitchen. Hawkeye feels most comfortable in the kitchen, most days. It’s where mortals are their most vibrant, in his experience. He hopes, fleetingly, that the dead man feels comforted, too, by the surroundings.

“I’m honored you’ve come to me, Mr. Briskton,” Hawkeye says, casual and friendly, hoping that his words won’t wound the dead man too much, “But I’m afraid I’m out of the guiding business, these days. I don’t have the power to take you where you need to go.”

The old man’s shoulders slump at the words, but his disappointment is brief. He looks up at Hawkeye, eventually, and offers a shrug. Hawkeye chooses to think the motion means something like “thanks, anyway.”

“Don’t worry, though. I’ve got friends in high places. You’ll have to wait a few days, probably, but you’ll be in good hands.”

At that, Briskton’s somber eyes light up with relief and joy. Hawkeye doesn’t blame the ghost a bit. It’s not quite hell for the dead, being trapped in the world of the living, but it’s pretty close. 

Hawkeye calls up Jack on the house phone (the god answers immediately, bless him, and promises to send the closest of their siblings his way by dawn) and catches himself before he accidentally offers the old man a midnight snack, after. Hawkeye himself doesn’t hesitate to cut himself a big piece of leftover cake from the night before. He gobbles it down with a tall glass of cold milk and talks--between mouthfuls--to Briskton about everything and nothing. He doesn’t worry about censoring himself; the dead already know more secrets than anyone, and none of what the old man hears will be shared on this plane of existence.

\--

It amuses him, when he thinks on it, how easily humanity is deceived. Moreover, these days, it amuses him how easily humanity does everything--how easy it is for them to love, to cherish, to adapt and accept and grow and learn and believe and...everything, indeed.

Erin lies down with him on the cool hood of BJ’s 1950 Ford, parked on the shoulder in the California countryside, both god and mortal child gazing up with wonder and delight at the arching sky and its incalcuable stars. It’d taken more than a bit of whining and bribery (the former on Erin’s part, the latter on Hawkeye’s) before mother and father Hunnicutt had agreed to let Uncle Hawkeye abscond with their only child to wilds unknown. All of the time spent had been worth it, however. 

Hawkeye turns his head and grins at Erin, who grins in return.

“Tell me their names,” Erin demands imperiously. She’s gotten rather that way, over the years, maybe _more_ with every year that goes by. It delights Hawkeye to no end. Peggy pretends she’s mortified, but he knows in his heart of hearts that she’s glad her daughter knows her place in the world--that of a powerhouse, capable of whatever she pleases to do in (or, more accurately, with) it.

Hawkeye gestures up. “What, all of them?”

“Fine. Just the important ones.”

Hawkeye snorts. “It’s all important, peapod. Every star, every stone, every molecule of air.”

Erin considers this for a while in silence. She abandons the issue of stars, for a moment, and instead asks a question that causes Hawkeye’s ancient mind to spin. 

“When I’m dead, will you guide me to Heaven?” 

Hawkeye’s throat goes tight and his palms get damp and his eyes blur with sudden, painful tears at the very thought. 

He has no wings, no power, no chance of guiding anyone anywhere ever again. He promises her only what he can, instead. “When your time comes, sweetheart, you won’t be alone.”

\--

In truth, Erin outlives him by decades. That’s the way of mortality, when it’s working fairly. Children outlive their parents, in an ideal world, and Hawkeye would never have let the world of his favorite humans be anything but the pinnacle.

Hawkeye grows old, like any mortal man. It’s not surprising to him, all things considered. At first, it’s even a rather novel experience. Then, the strangeness of the situation grows familiar, and he simply relaxes into it. Why not? There are, he knows, worse things than death.

And it’s not as if he goes into it unknowing. And he certainly does not go to his death by himself.

\--

Jack looks young, but Jack has always looked young, since the day they met and probably for eons before.

Hawkeye blinks, slowly, and when he glances down at his own hands, he finds those telltale signs of advanced age (thin and wrinkled skin, mottled spots, thick and winding veins, swollen and aching knuckles, a persistent tremor) gone, replaced by hands he had worn for centuries and all through a series of wars, besides. He cannot see his face in the mirror--his face is not real, after all--but he imagines he if did, it would be the face of a much younger-looking mortal man, a man with prematurely graying hair and a devilish smirk, to boot.

He turns to Jack and opens his mouth to speak before he remembers, with a painful thud of a heart he does not actually have, anymore, that his words will make no sound. So, he just smiles broadly at his brother, instead, and wiggles his fingers in a cocky wave.

Jack grins back and pulls him into a hug. “How time flies, huh?” he says, and Hawkeye can only shrug. It had, indeed, gone pretty fast. But every fleeting minute had been worth it, as far as he’s concerned.

Ahead of him is BJ, already, gone four months ago in his sleep. Behind him, still, is Peggy--women do tend to live longer, on average--but Hawkeye figures her soul won’t feel much like lingering, now. They’ve all had time to watch Erin grow, to raise another child between them (Hawkeye’s or BJ’s bloodkin, they didn’t know, and they didn’t care) and watch him grow up, too. They’ve shared a hand in raising grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The world around them has muddled on, fascinating and horrifying in turns. They’ve prospered and grown in new, stateside careers and varied, all-consuming interests. They’ve made friends and lost friends and, all in all, lived long, happy lives.

Death is just another step into something different. Hawkeye knows that better than any other dead man in the universe, most likely, and so he’s not concerned by it in the least.

When the light to his path appears, though, Hawkeye pauses. What, he wonders, filled with awe and dread in equal measure, could this road possibly be like? What should one expect from the long, long life of a god turned mortal man? What kinds of terrible regrets and horrible monsters might a sinner like he see with every step?

Jack takes Hawkeye’s hands in his and gives them a squeeze. Hawkeye is surprised to find that while he can feel the touch, it’s distant, as if Jack is pressing his fingers through an unseen haze of static. How odd the world is, to the departed. 

“Whatever we find in there,” Jack says, soothing and wise and so damnedly trustworthy, on the surface, “I’ll get you through it.”

Hawkeye snorts, the noise silent but hard to miss, regardless. 

Jack’s solemn gaze breaks under the force of a broad, shit-eating grin. “Yeah, ok. I guess you know the partyline better than anybody, huh? Fine, then. Beats the fuck out of me what we’re gonna see in there, my friend. To be frank, I figure it’s gonna be pretty terrifying, all in all. But, hey, we’re still gonna get through. You’ll get your paradise. And that’s the truth, I swear.”

Jack’s truth is worth about as much as a dust bunny in the corner of a politician’s closet. Still, it’s a non-truth that Hawkeye understands right down to the very core of his being. Some lies are necessary and even just. Hawkeye knows he’s in good hands, and that’s good enough.

Hawkeye pats Jack’s shoulder as he passes him by and, head held high, Hermes walks directly into the bright and waiting light.

\--


End file.
